Quake

by Andy Remic

  They climbed the steep woodland incline, Jam at the apex of the triangle, leading the way forward, ECube set to max and scanning the environment for electronic trip mechanisms or mines or any of a hundred other devices that would give away their position.

  Jam halted, dropping to one knee.

  Somewhere in the distance, an animal rustled in the woods. Jam wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead - his combats were heavy and the still woodland air was humid in comparison to the UK at this time of year. This, combined with the mountain inclines, was really making Jam and the rest of the DemolSquad work for their money.

  The ECube flashed a warning - not with lights, for lights could be detected by the enemy, but with a high-frequency laser designed so that only Jam’s eye could match the frequency and see anything there at all ... Slater and TT, highly tuned to Jam’s lead, dropped to one knee also and scanned their surroundings. Jam turned, giving the signal for optical tripwires - very advanced, and regular tactical favourites of the Nex. Slater and TT focused their own ECubes and they stepped silently over the traps.

  Closing in, Jam thought grimly, and slipped free the safety on his SA1000.

  They moved through the dark woods. More inclines passed beneath their boots, until finally the land began to level out before dipping away through sparse trees towards a small wooden hut built from rough-hewn logs and with an old moss-corroded red-tile roof The windows were blacked out and Jam could detect no sounds, even with the ECube’s aural enhancers - but that did not mean that the hut was empty. Switching to thermal scanning, the ECube detected four bodies within the hut -and one seated just outside.

  Jam squinted.

  Motherfucker, he thought as he finally clocked the guard - a sniper - perched in a tiny hide of leaves and twigs, completely concealed from view. Jam, moving with extreme care, signalled to TT and she crawled forward on her belly and gently released the bipod, resting her silenced Barrett against the soft loamy ground.

  Leaves and twigs sprang into view, and she zoomed in on the potential threat. She spotted him easily, for he was a Nex and had copper eyes. Always a give-away, she thought grimly. He was bearing a sniper rifle but did not have it trained on the surroundings.

  ‘Lazy,’ she muttered to herself as she squeezed the Barrett’s trigger. There came the tiniest of hisses, then a rustle of dry leaves as the Nex guard was taken through the throat - and vocal cords - and sent rolling to one side, blood leaking to feed the tree roots, mouth working in a silent scream of pain, fingers scrabbling at the bullet wound. The second bullet smashed through the Nex’s forehead, killing him instantly.

  Jam gave the thumbs-up and they closed warily on the cabin. Jam’s plan was simple - an MNK, or MindNuke, turned up on full and launched through the window. It would explode silently, and with no flash - and would scramble the brains of anybody within a twenty-five-metre radius. The MNK had different settings and could be used to take out harmless targets with what was affectionately called a ‘fry-up’; the DemolSquads had found that on full power the MindNukes were particularly deadly against Nex, whose insect-blending made them almost impervious to bullet wounds unless an accurate head-shot was secured. As DemolSquad members had found the hard way, Nex were very, very tough in one-on-one combat; they felt little or no pain. MNKs evened the odds a little ...

  They halted, and Jam readied the weapon, twisting the two halves of the small silver globe. Having set it, he signalled to his companions and, his SA1000 gripped in one hand, crept through the meagre woodland towards the darkened cabin.

  They’re asleep, he thought.

  Too easy?

  Never look a gift horse in the mouth ...

  He reached the wall, his gloved hand resting lightly against the rough bark of the timbers. He glanced back through the darkness and could just make out TT and Slater, scanning arcs, checking for enemies with ECubes primed and eyesight set to maximum overdrive. Jam eased himself up the wall and peered through the glass. He saw nothing but a small storeroom - but that was perfectly adequate for his needs. He placed the ECube against the glass and there was the tiniest of tinkling noises as a small rectangle of glass was sucked free. Then he pushed the MNK through the hole - and ran for it...

  Skidding to a halt in the branches, he glanced back.

  The DemolSquad sensed rather than heard the MNK detonate; a ripple seemed to pulse through the woods and they all shivered, aware of the damage that these silent and devastating weapons could cause. Then, standing and checking ECubes once more for enemy activity, they strode towards the cabin. Jam kicked the door down and moved forward with his SA1000 primed. The four Nex were dead in their beds, faces twisted in agony, dark copper eyes weeping blood onto their pillows. Jam poked one in the face with the SA1000’s barrel and turned to Slater, his mouth opening to congratulate the large warrior on a job well done, a nest destroyed without casualty or even conflict—

  A gunshot rang out.

  TT was picked up and flung against Slater, her chest exploding to splatter strips of ragged flesh against the huge man, her eyes wide and her mouth spewing blood. Jam leapt forward as a second shot rang out, slapping into the back of TT’s lolling head even as her weight carried Slater to the ground. He grunted as he hit the earth of the cabin floor, face to face with his companion, his friend, a woman who had saved his life on several occasions ... Her eyes were wide, her gaze confused, blood pouring from her mouth to wash over Slater and sting his eyes and drench his hair and jacket.

  Her hands were clawed, grasping Slater’s combat jacket, but the fingers slowly went slack and Jam stepped over the two sprawled figures with a look of anger and hatred and disgust on his face. He opened up on full automatic, the SA1000’s bullets strafing across the woodland in front of him, steel slivers screaming and howling between the trees, kicking sparks from the distance, splintering timber from boles and sending a dark figure suddenly sprinting for cover—

  ‘Slater!’ he bellowed.

  ‘I’m with you,’ grunted Slater, rolling TT to one side and grasping his shotgun in blood-slippery hands. He paused for a moment, looking down at her partially destroyed face and the pulp of mashed skull. He sighed, deep inside, and spat out her blood - which stained his teeth and run down his throat - onto the dusty floor.

  Jam and Slater sprinted through the darkened woods, grim now, faces drawn with bitterness and need. A need to kill. They flicked their ECubes to pursuit shell - audible warnings would inform them of an attack from any direction, or other threats such as mortars, mines or approaching tanks.

  And the two men put all their efforts into a hot pursuit through the woods ...

  The gunman was fast - incredibly fast.

  Jam paused, Slater almost cannoning into his back, and they caught their breaths, their eyes scanning the steep decline ahead of them, leading down through a stand of trees to what appeared to be a narrow stream bed filled with leaves and old broken branches.

  They heard the gunman crunch his way free, scrambling up the opposite bank.

  Both men opened fire, bullets whining down the hill and embedding in the earth with dull impact sounds. Slater’s shotgun barked out devastating shells that tore bark from trees, and the SA1000 hammered savagely. They paused, sweat rolling down their faces in the humid night.

  A muffled engine growl sounded as a bike kicked into life. Jam cursed.

  They set off, sprinting once more, down the steep slope and then up the other side; the engine noise was loud, but stuttering, an off-road bike of some kind. Jam reached the top of the slope first, launched himself forward on his belly across the branches and leaves and took aim. The bike was weaving between trees and bouncing off unseen obstacles in the gloom. Jam squeezed off a three-round burst. Then another. Then another—

  The bike’s engine suddenly screamed, its rubber tyres exploded and the whole machine flipped into the air, cannoning into a tree and depositing the gunman dazed on the ground with the smashed bike on top of him. The engine died and the wheels spun, c
licking. Jam leapt up and with Slater close behind him sprinted towards the stricken rider who heaved the fallen bike and turned a sub-machine gun on his pursuers—

  All hell broke loose as bullets ripped through the woodland. Jam and Slater slammed into trees, and Jam’s SA1000 sent a stream of bullets into the darkness. The return fire ceased and the Nex - they had glimpsed his thin grey body-hugging suit and his balaclava that revealed only gleaming copper eyes - sprinted away, dodging athletically between the trees.

  ‘The bastard just won’t go down,’ snapped Jam. The two large men set off at a sprint once more, arms and legs pumping, lungs heaving, too used to the good life, and they heaved themselves up another slope, boots ploughing through woodland debris until they reached the top—

  The Nex was running hard, head down, powering along at an incredible rate. Jam lifted his gun and the Nex, ducking left and right, glanced over its shoulder as the SA1000 fired a single bullet. The Nex was picked up, sent spinning end over end and deposited in an untidy heap beside a small cairn of rocks. Beyond, Jam and Slater could see a drop of some kind, a rocky edge falling away into a dark, shadow-haunted valley.

  Warily, the two men, their chests still heaving, moved forward down this uneven rocky slope. Closing on the Nex, both levelled weapons at the still body. Circling, eyes on the surrounding landscape, Jam pulled out a silenced Beretta XI pistol and placed three bullets in the Nex’s head.

  They stood, panting, covered in grime and TT’s blood, faces grim as realisation and horror sank in. Their friend was dead - and the ECubes had given them no warning.

  ‘I have a fucking bad feeling,’ rumbled Slater slowly.

  ‘It’s like when the QIII processor hacked the ECubes. You get that same sinking feeling? Like you’re naked? Vulnerable?’

  Slater nodded in the gloom, staring down at the crumpled grey-clad figure. ‘What’s over there?’

  ‘Well, he was sure running somewhere fast.’

  ‘You think there are more Nex?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jam grimly.

  They moved closer to the valley, dropping to their bellies as they neared the gash in the ground. ‘I can’t see anything,’ muttered Jam, and they crawled up to the edge to peer down into the deep narrow V, scattered with dark trees and large piles of rocks, below them.

  There was a distant log cabin, and Slater nudged Jam, pointing with his gun. In the gloom Jam could just make out a narrow bridge of thick wooden sleepers connecting both sides of the valley. Large rocks were clustered around the opposite bank: a perfect defensive location.

  Jam set his ECube to scan.

  He turned to Slater, confusion in his eyes. ‘The cabin and the bridge are not there,’ he said softly. ‘The ECube can’t see anything. It’s blind. What the fuck is going on?’

  Slater muttered something evil, and Jam turned back, staring down at the valley where nothing moved.

  ‘I’ll go back, check the Nex,’ said Slater.

  ‘Yeah. You do that.’

  Jam stared hard, trying to work out why the ECube couldn’t scan these simplest of objects before him. Was there some kind of natural screening? Some source of strange radiation or IR that was interfering with the complex electronic mechanics of Spiral’s premier agent device?

  A noise interrupted his thoughts - a low, metallic sound - and Jam whirled, eyes squinting into the darkness. He came up onto his knees, his SA1000 presented for action.

  ‘Slater?’ he hissed.

  Nothing. He could see nothing ...

  Climbing up to his feet, he crept forward towards the crumpled Nex. Then his adjusting eyes picked out the fallen figure of Slater and he dropped to a crouch, instantly freezing, scanning the surroundings. Fuck, screamed his brain as he checked his ECube.

  The tiny alloy machine was completely dead.

  Jam’s face tightened into a grimace.

  The SA1000 swung left, then right, as Jam’s sharp eyes scanned for enemies. Was Slater alive? Dead? A sniper’s silenced bullet? Jam dropped to his belly, and very slowly, using trees for cover, worked his way gradually towards his fallen friend.

  As he reached Slater, he hissed, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  There was no response.

  Jam crept closer, and to his horror he saw that Slater’s throat had been cut. The big man’s neck sported a gaping crimson mouth. Blood had pooled in the leaves beneath his head and Jam felt his own heart rate kick up a gear with bursts of injected adrenalin as his fingers reached out and took Slater’s shotgun.

  ‘Somebody is going to fucking die,’ he growled, rising beside a wide tree for cover, his eyes glaring off into the gloom. He turned - and a huge black shape reared up in front of him, an incredibly sudden movement faster than a striking cobra—

  Jam gasped as something huge and hard slammed into his face.

  He remembered the rich scent of the soil, and the leaves.

  And then nothing.

  CHAPTER 4

  SEVERANCE

  The snow fell heavily. Carter could feel it whipping coldly against his face as his body curled, cradling the woman as they slammed into the flower beds. Carter rolled, bouncing roughly, the woman’s scream suddenly halted as air was punched from her naked bruised frame ...

  Carter’s eyes shot open as the crevasse loomed before him - a huge frightening maw smashing towards him. His boots kicked out violently against the narrow trunk of a pine tree and heaved them both away, rolling with grunts to the paved path ... the crevasse roared past, rock grinding rock and spewing splinters, consuming the pine and disappearing beneath the swaying hotel - which buckled like a melted toy, folding around the dancing flames from the boiler room, debris exploding outwards as the earthquake’s tremors eventually subsided.

  Dust billowed, followed closely by fire. Sirens were still wailing, and helicopter searchlights swept the landscape.

  Behind Carter another section of the hotel collapsed with an inferno roar. He could hear the stampeding of boots.

  He looked down into the woman’s eyes and released a pent-up breath. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly and reached up to kiss his cheek. Carter gazed once more into the darkness that had so very nearly claimed them.

  ‘A close call,’ he muttered—

  And then felt it. A presence, behind him. Carter rolled free of the naked woman’s embrace and stared up at Natasha’s face. Her gaze was unreadable, skin glowing on one side from the hotel fires, eyes gleaming as a helicopter searchlight swept over them.

  Natasha helped the woman to her feet and draped a blanket around her shoulders, talking softly to her as she shivered, fear deep in her eyes.

  Carter shuffled away from the rip in the earth as stones trickled free at the edges and disappeared into deep blackness.

  ‘This day just gets better and better,’ he muttered, finger touching a tiny cut on his face and coming away stained with blood. ‘Fuck me,’ he hissed, gaze transferring from his finger to the abnormal crack in the world’s mantle. A deep sigh escaped his lips and he calmed his raging mind.

  They took the rescued woman to a red and white ambulance that had paramedics swarming round it, helped her into the back, then surveyed the full destruction caused by the earthquake. Rescue and emergency services were stretched to their physical capabilities by this sudden disaster.

  Carter and Natasha watched sadly as brave Swiss firefighters battled the flames. They held one another tightly under the falling snow. A policeman tried to usher them into an ambulance, but Carter waved him away. ‘I need a whisky, not the fucking hospital,’ he drawled.

  They moved away from the throng of emergency services and the darkness started to close in around them away from the lights and the fire. Natasha lifted her ECube into her hand and her gaze met Carter’s. ‘It would seem we have a message.’

  ‘What wonderful timing.’

  Natasha activated the tiny screen, chewed on her lip and then smiled up at Carter. ‘Some shit is going down; we are summoned to an urgent meeting in
London, at the new Spiral_H buildings.’

  ‘So, then,’ he pondered. ‘Our plan of action is that we find another hotel, get cleaned up, get some food ... then flag ourselves down some transport and—’

  ‘Now, Carter. They’re coming for us now ...’

  ‘Bastards,’ said Carter with feeling. ‘They fucking know we’re on holiday. I knew we should have left the ECube at home. Fucking work. Do they know about the earthquake? We’re not in a fit state! We need some R&R!’

  ‘It’s important,’ said Natasha softly.

  ‘Not as important as my down time. Come on, we might be able to salvage something from the cabin - if the bastard is still standing.’

  ‘The police are cordoning off the area - we’ll be lucky to get in. They’ve set up a temporary shelter for the quake victims, further down the mountain pass.’

  Natasha met Carter’s gaze, looking at his steely eyes, the cuts on his face, his dust- and blood-stained clothes.

  ‘Believe me, we’ll get in,’ he said, and taking her hand, led her towards the darkness of the hotel cabins and the yellow police tape.

  As they walked through the snow, a roar echoed from the valley below. They stopped, turning, glancing past the flames and horror of the smashed hotel, and beyond to the glittering town of Zermatt ... The roaring increased, rumbling from below and above, the sounds bouncing from the mountains and hillsides, reverberating and increasing until they became so loud as to drown out conversation—

  ‘No,’ whispered Natasha, eyes wide, lips gleaming.

  The earthquake tore through the town with a single mammoth, clubbing sweep, smashing buildings into pulverised dust like toys stamped under a giant’s boot, spitting chunks of shattered concrete, stone and timber up into the air in cascading arcs with shrieks of tearing and cracking; ripping the civilised world apart with appalling ease. Devastating trenches chewed through the rock, opening up to swallow whole buildings, bucking horses, spinning carriages, screaming pulverised people and in a final giant concussive boom like the ending of worlds the haze of lights that illuminated Zermatt was swept away beneath a tidal wave of evil and darkness ...