B-spine

by Cam Winstanley

  She opens CarmineNet as another squad hustle in at a crouch to take up defensive positions behind it. She has to work spit up in her mouth before she can speak.

  “Carlucci,” she croaks. “Be advised, armor inbound, armor inbound.”

  “Cusack here, clarify that. I don’t hear vehicles.”

  “Negative to that,” she says, hearing the panic in her own voice. “No vehicles. It’s a bear. They’re throwing an armored bear at us. We are so fucked...”

  Friday 14 March

  11:38 am

  “CARMINE ESCALANTE? YOU’RE Carmine Escalante?” The man on the Slate screen looked mid-40s and was brawny the way that ex-soldiers get when they stop living the life. Solid through the shoulders but flabby round the chin – too many donuts and not enough pull-ups.

  Carmine looked surprised to find himself talking to some old guy hiding his features under dark glasses and a fallball cap. “I’m Carmine,” he nodded. “What’s it to you?”

  “Do you want to take the time to check the call header, Carmine?”

  “I see it already. It says your call’s being routed through the Citadel. Which makes you Meat4 Power, right?”

  “Right. If I told you that I represent that company in matters of security, would you have an idea why I’m calling?”

  Carmine Escalante’s day turned sour. “I would,” he said. “But I can’t deal directly with you people. It would be a conflict of...”

  “...interest? Not at all. We’re both interested in the same client. A Federal Environmental officer. Name of Powell.”

  Carmine tightened his lips and shook his head. “No. No way. I won’t disclose client details.”

  “Well maybe you will, maybe you won’t but here’s the thing,” said Bishop. “But Powell’s off the books on this one. I already know that she’s not on Federal Environmental time and that Bostov Cryonics are paying you to cover her so in this respect, she’s just an ordinary citizen. Which means you won’t be breaking any federal law to help me out. So here’s what has to happen. I’m in an airship and I’m coming straight for you, Carmine. I need you to give up Powell before I start doing circles over your office.”

  Carmine shook his head again, more vigorously this time. “Your information’s all wrong, mister. I’ve never heard of this Powell.”

  “Oh come on, Carmine. Do you think I work off bad intel?”

  Carmine paled. “What you ask... it’s impossible,” he said.

  “It’s inevitable,” countered Bishop.

  “It’s unethical. I gave these people my word.”

  “Well,” said Bishop, “If you’re that principled, this is going to sting a little. But hear me out, Carmine...”

  Friday 14 March

  12:25 am

  THE OPERATOR MISSES the blast that rocks the container and throws Kirsty off the table. By the time the call goes off the hold message and the operator comes back on-screen, Kirsty’s relocated to the floor.

  “That’s the ID checks confirmed,” she says, “so if you can just give me a prosecution number.”

  Kirsty sniffs back the first trickle of a nosebleed. “A prosecution number hasn’t been generated yet. The case is ongoing.”

  “Then the assignment code instead, please.”

  It’s hard to keep calm with so much gunfire outside. “There’s no assignment code either. Look, it’s kind of complicated but I witnessed events without specifically being assigned to a job and…”

  “Officer Powell, a case with neither code nor number isn’t a case at all.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” she says. “I’ve got interviews, physical evidence, lab results. The reason it hasn’t been compiled into a finished case flow is that people are shooting at me.”

  The operator frowns unsympathetically. “To sanction any response we’d require, at the very least, clearance from your superior.”

  “I don’t have time to work the chain of command. My situation is life-threatening. That’s why I called you direct.”

  “All the same Officer, I’m in no position to release support for a case only you say exists.”

  Kirsty stops snuffing and hopes that blood flooding down her face speaks volumes. “Yes you are, you’re the FBI. Just dial through and get a response unit rolling.”

  “I’ll need to speak with my superior about this.”

  Kirsty’s panic rises as the operator’s hands work a keypad.

  “Do not put me on...” She puts Kirsty on hold.

  Chuck McQuarrie pushes the muzzle of his SAW out of a firing slot and fires a full hundred and fifty round belt as the grizzly bear closes on his container and they all bounce off. The bear shambles onwards and even though the smoke and dust have brought visibility right down to pretty much zero, Chuck can still make out bobbing heads behind the bulk of its swaying haunches. McQuarrie sizes the animal up as two meters end-to-end, three hundred kilos easily. He doesn’t know how much armor it’s shouldering but does know he’d need anti-tank weapons to breach it.

  The bear rears up against the container and he hears steel-tipped claws scratching painted metal as its chest covers his fireport. He’s turning to flee as the container echoes to the unmistakable clunk of magnets fixing to the metal side. He’s heaving the door shut when the cutting charge flash star-bright and the blast spews out. The metal door catches and deflects the force, saving McQuarrie from being shredded but breaking his arm as it flies open.

  He staggers back, his vision blurred, his center of balance thrown off to one side by the blast. As the bear emerges from the smoking container, he swings his machine gun up only to see it tumble out of hands too numb to pull the trigger. The bear swings its head, drool dripping from vents at the base of the helmet, eyes hidden behind the curve of a mirrored visor. As McQuarrie turns and tries to lurch away, the bear comes after him. He makes one jolting footfall, then another, then another. His head lolls as his vision, still over-printed by the flash of the cutting charge, stars and jumps with each faltering step. Then he feels the bear right behind him. He’s opening comms as it trips him and stomps its crushing weight all over him and he screams his final transmission over CarmineNet, telling everyone to fall back to the final refuge right now and oh god it hurts.

  Slate’s on the floor playing hold muzak as Kirsty tips the table and pushes it into the back corner of the back room of the final refuge. She climbs over and crouches in the triangle of space between it and the walls, then props Slate on her knees and pulls a mildewed ballistic vest over her head. She pulls the Jericho pistol from her belt and stares hatefully at Slate, her nose dropping blood in a steady patter as she waits for the operator’s return.

  “I think my superior’s just stepped out for a bathroom break,” she says as her fat, smooth, clean face replaces the FBI logo on screen.

  “So hear this good, lady,” says Kirsty, as cold and clear as she can manage. “My survival is down to you, understand? I live or I die and it’s your choice. So you know who I am and I hope you believe I’m in trouble. In a life-threatening situation, any federal employee is entitled to any backup they deem necessary. And right now... I deem a whole fucking army necessary... okay?”

  The operator’s bubbly persona died minutes ago. “Look honey, don’t take that tone with me. I don’t have the power to...”

  “You do but you won’t. I’m fucking pleading with you here. Cut some corners and come help me.”

  “It’s not that easy. There are protocols.” She looks around nervously. “Have you called local PD?”

  Kirsty snorts, showering blood onto Slate’s screen. “PD are outside directing traffic round this.” There’s a clatter in the front room as Cusack and a woman tumble in. “You want to see this?” She holds Slate over the desk to give the operator action – live and uncensored from the front.

  The operator gets to sees Cusack on his back on the floor, emptying his weapon down the stairwell then rolling away as the return fire bounces off the ceiling. She sees the woman – Har
mony Carlucci – slam the door, bolt the door then immediately slide open a waist-level fireport. Even above the clatter of gunfire, Kirsty hears her outgoing rounds smacking hard into soft flesh at the other side of the door. Cusack looks round, his eyes wide behind goggles and helmet. “You getting anywhere with that?” he shouts, and Kirsty prays the operator hears him.

  She shouts “Help’s all tied up in red tape right now,” purely for the benefit of the operator.

  He shouts “Well keep trying, girl. I’m starting to lose faith in Carmine coming for us after all...”

  She swings Slate round and smiles cruelly at the operator’s obvious shock. “What’s it to be?” She wipes her nose, smearing fresh blood across her cheek but the woman at Quantico’s shaking her head.

  “I don’t have the power to authorize…”

  Then the bear starts pounding on the door hard enough to shake the room and Kirsty realizes that every federal troop in the world won’t save her now because she’s all out of time.

  “Well hey,” she spits at the screen, “you go for your donut break and I’ll sort my own shit out. Have a nice life now.”

  She drops Slate and racks a round into the Jericho. The bear pounds the door again and again until the next time, the hinges tear out with a squeal of stressed metal and the door folds inwards and the bear tumbles right on in.

  Friday 14 March

  11:40 am

  “WELL,” SAID BISHOP, “I know it goes against the grain. But hear me out, Carmine. Toronto’s a Meat4 Power hub, to all practical extents. Am I right?”

  Carmine looked ill but was trying hard to act like the Marine he once had been. “We supply security, mister. Our promise has to mean something.”

  “And I respect that but let’s take a cold, logical look at this,” said Bishop. “Unfortunately for you, you’re treading on our toes. Which I can overlook, because it’s only business. But do you really, I mean really want us to tread right back on your toes? Because we both know who’s got the bigger boots.”

  Carmine looked set to faint. “What you’re asking me to do is… Can you imagine how my client will react when this gets out?”

  “I’ll give you the flip side of that. If you don’t do this, I can order an airship to drift over your house or your kid’s school any time, day or night. It’ll be silent. It’ll be carrying a fifty five gallon drum of napalm. I can do this and I will do this and I’ll even order local PD to halt traffic so your neighbors won’t get splashed. Live in Toronto, play by our rules. Give her up, Carmine.” Bishop thought he saw tears in the man’s eyes masked by the screen’s low resolution.

  “I can tell you where she’s heading,” said Carmine eventually. “But I’ve got my best man guarding her and there’s no way he’ll give her up. He’ll go down before he folds.”

  “That’s more than fair of you.”

  “It’s storage unit five,” he said, sullenly. “Access is off the corner of 120th and Mayfair.”

  “And that’s all we want. Look, if you’re bothered about getting bad press over this, don’t worry. If M4P needs a UPF in future, we’ll come to you. Oh, I’ve got to say, even from this little talk, I can tell that you really do care…”

  Friday 14 March

  12:29 am

  THE END, WHEN it comes, plays out in whispers and whines. Kirsty wonders if this has anything to do with the grenade going off in the confines of the final refuge. Her head pounds and her nose is gushing and she can barely hear and can’t hold a thought past a few seconds.

  The final refuge is a mess. Cusack had made out like they could hold out for ages, what with the air and water filtration running on clean-burn hydrogen cells. She thought they’d eat canned food and fire crate-loads of ammunition out of reinforced firepoints until help arrived.

  Only now, everything’s in a jumble and she doesn’t know which crate holds food and which one has ammunition. Besides, with all the bodies jammed in and the bear battering Cusack off all four walls, it’s too crowded to start checking them out. Her ears are bleeding down the side of her face. She wonders if it has anything to do with the grenade going off.

  So now she’s got her own final, final refuge, kneeling behind the table in one corner. The bullet-proof vest she’d hidden under had taken most of the hissing wire and fragments when the grenade went off and now she’s got the added protection of a body slumping across the tipped-over table. He’s got a military style flexible vest, the kind with added shoulder pads and an extended groin flap. Kirsty’s pleased he’s chosen to lie still in front of her because he’s better protection than a whole wall of wet sandbags.

  She’s gripping her Jericho pistol with both hands resting on his back and she can feel his body heat through his armor. She saw him coming at her the moment the bear ripped the door off. The big, black, body-armored bear. Her eyes hurt. They feel too dry and scratchy on the outside, too wet and full and heavy on the inside…

  So anyway, this guy had come in with four or five others and that’s when the grenade had gone off, right at the bear’s feet. Someone lost a leg, someone else flapped about and sprayed the room from his neck but the bear didn’t even break stride lunging for Cusack.

  That’s when Harmony, Cusack’s buddy from Carmine Cares, had put out a hail of fire that had dropped just about everyone, even the one leg guy, even the neck spray guy. Harmony had hit everyone except for the one she’s leaning on now. He’d reached over the table, brushed the vest off Kirsty’s head, snatched a handful of her hair and that’s when she’d put her rented Jericho pistol to the left lens of his gas mask and pulled the trigger. She’d thought it had misfired since she hadn’t heard a gun blast but she’d felt the recoil sure enough and he’d slumped over the table and been there ever since. She remembers hearing the door tear off and the grenade exploding but nothing else. She figures it must have been the grenade that blew her hearing out.

  All of that, the explosion, the charging man, the single pistol shot to the eye, that’s a minute in the past now. In the foggy, almost silent present, Harmony’s defending Kirsty’s final, final refuge too. She’s propped herself up against the table on the other side to Kirsty, slumped by the dead guy’s feet. Helmet gone and half her scalp hanging off, burned clumps of hair slicked by bright blood that’s flowing down her face in pulses. Kirsty can see that Harmony’s trying to push a full clip into her assault rifle but her hands aren’t working too well and she can’t line up the mag’s edges with the feeder slot.

  They both watch as Cusack tries his best to fight the bear hand-to-hand, jamming the point of a bayonet into the joint between its neck and chest armor as the bear bats him from wall to wall with heavy, steel-covered paws. It keeps trying to bite him too. Silly bear, thinks Kirsty, it’s got a helmet on. Every time it tries to bite, it just butts Cusack in his bleeding, battered face.

  Her eyes wander away from this one-sided brawl to where two more black, body-armored bears are standing in the final refuge’s only doorway. She levels her pistol at them as they lumber on their hind legs past the man with the one leg who’s still clawing the air despite catching a shit load of Harmony’s rounds. She aims high, hoping for a lucky penetration on the unarmored throat but the bears don’t seem to mind her shooting at them, not at all.

  They stroll towards their companion who’s gripping Cusack tight now and is working those steel claws inch by inch into his stomach. Kirsty’s puzzled and frowns, because although the two she’s shooting at have identical armor, they’re less than half the size of the bear gutting Cusack. They’re holding guns in their paws too. Huge black slabs of metal and plastic that make her pistol look like a kid’s toy.

  The big bear doesn’t see them. It’s too busy making Cusack scream. The first little bear pushes the gun against big bear’s armpit and she sees a flash and feels the concussion on her face but hears nothing.

  Big bear stops ripping holes in Cusack. It drops him and he falls like a rag doll as big bear swings round to face little bear, who steps back, s
houlders his rifle and aims it right at the center of big bear’s visor.

  The gun jumps and it’s as if the bear’s limbs suddenly feel the massive weight of the armor and simply can’t hold it up any more. Big bear hits the floor hard enough to shake the final refuge on its long metal struts. Cusack, craning his neck to watch, seems pleased with the unexpected turn of events, although since he’s scooping his intestines in with both hands, Kirsty can’t be one hundred percent sure.

  Little bear reaches out and takes the empty pistol out of her hands before unclipping his big, black body-armored face to reveal a small, pink, human one underneath.

  He’s telling her something but Kirsty can’t lip read. The room’s filling with a family of little bears, one kneeling next to Cusack, another pulling Harmony to her feet.

  Kirsty thinks well, that didn’t turn out to be too bad and wonders why it had been so quiet even with all the gunfire. Then she remembers the grenade going off. Maybe, she thinks as she lets them haul her out of her final, final refuge… maybe the silence has something to do with that.

  Friday 14 March

  12:25 am

  TUMBLING ROUNDS, THEIR energy spent from bouncing off the concrete hard-standing, skipped off the roof of the utivan Bishop was crouching behind and hissed off into the distance. He stayed behind the steel hub of the wheel, uncomfortable but safe in a helmet and fat vest with ceramic composite plates front and back. Here, at the edge of the firefight, he’d seen the RESC stormtroopers go in and heard explosions that signaled their deaths. He’d watched a couple of bugbombers go in to try and flush out the defenders and not come out again. Now he was watching Bioweapons Division’s Kodiak bear lumber across the concrete. For once, they’d got one of their test products in the right place at the right time.