by Andy Remic
The building - or its two separate halves - rocked dangerously, steel and concrete screeching in torture, showers of dust and tiny lumps of concrete raining down.
Carter whirled and grabbed at the nearest man’s sleeve. ‘We need help.’ He met the huge man’s stark grey-eyed stare. Carter pointed.
The man, bearded, clad in black and with an SA1000 slung over his shoulder, nodded and followed Carter to the edge of the precipice. ‘Hold my back.’ Strong fingers grasped him, and Carter edged himself towards the crumbling torn edge.
The quake smashed more waves of destruction across London.
Again, Spiral HQ trembled as the earth beneath it was raped.
Natasha picked up the first child, a blond-haired boy with a red nose and snot covering his upper lip. Her stare met Carter’s as she gave a smile of calm and control - and threw the child across the abyss. Carter caught a tight grip on Tigger dungarees, and he turned, depositing the child on the ground. ‘Over there!’ shouted Carter. ‘Go to that woman over there!’
Seeing their plight, more Spiral operatives had come to help. As the earthquake roared around them and they faced certain death, they put aside their own fears and need for escape to offer help—
Natasha threw the second child. Carter caught it.
Stone crumbled from the edge where he stood and he glanced down involuntarily. The stolen Nex helicopter was a crumpled heap now, compressed and crushed between the heaving, buckling stone, brick and steel. Huge strands of reinforcing wire stuck from the concrete like severed rusting arteries. Far below, Carter could see fire and smell burning. Smoke trailed up towards him in lazy black spirals.
The third child flew across the gap, arms flapping, and smashed into Carter’s chest. His own arms wrapped tight, securing the little girl, and he passed her back to the human chain that had leapt into existence to aid these stranded children ...
The fourth child came, screaming, mouth wide. Carter grasped at her as she bounced and slipped, but his strong powerful fingers grabbed her clothing and passed her gently to the ground.
‘Mummy!’ she whimpered.
The huge man with the beard smiled, and patted her head. ‘She’ll be on the ground now, luvvie. Go on over to the chutes - it’ll be fun and then you’ll see her again.’
‘Thank you.’
The big man smiled again, then grasped Carter’s jacket more tightly.
‘One more.’
‘One more,’ agreed Carter, breathing deeply.
Black smoke billowed up from the unnatural crevasse. His gaze met Natasha’s through the smoke and heat as more tremors roared around them. Carter could feel the building moving beneath his boots and he suddenly felt sick to the core of his soul.
What the fuck is going on?
Natasha lifted the last child in her dirt-smeared fingers. A little boy, short hair, chubby tear-stained face, but with a look of defiance on it: he dangled precariously from her grasp. She took a step back and Carter could read the exultation of rescue in her face, in her glowing deep brown eyes as she launched the boy across the chasm and through the smoke and Carter’s hands grappled blindly, slipping from the boy as the Spiral man behind him reached forward, plucking the child from Carter’s fumbling grip and hauling the boy to safety ...
There came a deafening, screaming roar that went on and on and on and Carter wanted to cover his ears and his eyes were streaming and then he was engulfed by a wave of dust from below which cut into his eyes and mouth and he yelled, saliva drooling from grey lips. The section of the building on which Natasha stood began to sway crazily and she lost her footing and fell to one knee. Her stare was fixed on Carter through the dust as the building moved, shifted and started to crumble ... ‘No!’ snapped Kade.
‘I can save her,’ growled Carter.
He leapt across the chasm, into the dust.
ADVERTISING FEATURE
The TV sparkled into life with a digital buzz of electro-hum, diamond-sharp images spinning and morphing into the jewelled liquid logo of Leviathan Fuels.
You may be wondering who Leviathan Fuels are? After all, we have only been on the scene for a few months, but with this ... Over-cheerful Japanese scientist holds up a small metal object with a complex series of tubes and dials ... you can convert your road vehicle, be it diesel, petrol or gas, to run on LVA for only a few hundred dollars - LVA, a new fuel for the future, the fuel of choice for over two million happily satisfied customers...
Scene dissolves: two cars driving through spotless mountain passes high in the Alps. One car runs out of fuel and an angry man stands by the kerbside, kicking the tyre and pulling his Mr Bad Mr Angry face, whilst the second car...
Scene cross-fades: drives on, and on, children [1 x black, 1 x white, 1 x oriental] singing happily on the back seat and playing extremely violent hack-and-slash-’em-ups on their 3D HoloStation ...
400 hundred miles to the gallon! Go on, make the smart choice ... choose Leviathan fuels. Your children deserve a better future ...
Scene/text scroll R—M. [Arial black] acr. vid: And now, we have over 11,000 fuel outlets across the civilised world!!! Be smart! Become a Leviathan! Leviathan Fuels will change your life.
SCENE DISSOLVES TO RED
CHAPTER 7
BREED
When you’re a kid, summer lasts for ever. School finally shuts in a tumult of chaos and high spirits, and the weeks stretch away for an infinity, long days spent running through tall grass, down the park, the Church Fields, through Witch Woods and towards Jacob’s Ladder and the Old Nazi Bunker where they imagined a previous litany of war crimes had taken place.
Summer lasts for ever ...
‘Until you die,’ sneered Kade.
The pain whirled inside Carter’s brain: the agony of memories; the poisoned narcotic needle of childhood; the atomic blast of innocence and naivety and the high bright insane fucked-up whirling loss of these delicate treasures ...
‘It could never be the same again,’ he muttered.
As the black quake dust filled his mouth.
Oh, to be a child again,’ mocked Kade. ‘To languish in the mire of mockery, to paddle in the piss-stream of puerile poetry, to reel in the eternal uncertainty of pain and confusion and hate ... it is like a dream to me, a bad dream, a dark dream ... the best of dreams, my dark and twisted brother.’
‘Remember it?’ whispered Kade.
‘Remember it, my friend?
‘Surely you hadn’t forgotten?
‘Surely you hadn’t forgotten about ... Crowley? How poetic. How romantic. So beautiful I could be fucking sick ...’
It was summer. The days were long. The summer holidays had come and school was like a distant mad, bad dream. The days flowed into one another as the boys played on Church Fields: one day they were soldiers engaged in some terrible war against terrorism - just like their dads - another they were space heroes spat out into the universe on a terrible mission. On yet another they were aircraft pilots, killing all the evil and terrible drug barons in Colombia. They ran through the grass, into the woods, down to the river. They played in the park, in the concrete tubes, on the swings and the slide. They paddled in the shallow fast-flowing river, imagining incredible depths sporting terrifying monsters. Morris brought his BMX-i with Alloy-Kick2 to enable high stunt-jumping and they built a ramp off the top of the steps leading down the edges of the Church Fields; they dared one other to jump the two-metre drop and Carter was the first, flying through the air with a shout of triumph, the BMX-i landing with a violent wobble and a clang as the back wheel bottomed out through under-inflated tyres.
The days were long and good.
Childhood, it seemed, would never end.
‘But you’re not thinking, Carter, not thinking straight. Have you forgotten Crowley? Have you forgotten that bastard? What he and his friends did? Don’t tell me you pushed that out of your mind as well, you spineless worthless cheap whore bastard...’
‘Get him!’ came the roar.
&nb
sp; ‘Run!’ hissed Carter.
‘Why?’ asked Jimmy in innocent fear.
‘Run!’ Carter cried.
They ran, Carter holding Jimmy’s hand, guiding his blind brother down the narrow woodland trail; they stomped through mud, kicked nettles and plants from their path, could hear the distant roar of the river. They suddenly changed direction, trying to lose their pursuers. We can hide by the river, thought Carter, Jimmy’s hand sweating with fear in his own. He tugged Jimmy along, guiding the younger lad, his brotherly need to protect intense ...
‘And the rest,’ mocked Kade, ‘Don’t blank it out, Carter; remember it. Remember it all. ‘
‘We’re going to kill you!’ came Crowley’s hoarse thundering yell.
Evil laughter drifted down through the woods; a comedy accompaniment.
Carter could hear the river growing closer. He increased his speed, dragging Jimmy along behind him. The two boys hurtled down a narrow trail, weeds and nettles whipping at their bare legs.
‘I can’t run any more,’ wept Jimmy.
‘Come on, push yourself...’
‘I can’t!’ wailed the younger boy.
‘Come on!’ Carter hissed, slapping his brother around the back of the head. ‘You’ll get us both caught and Crowley will mess us up bad. You remember what he did to Morris? You remember? He’s still in the hospital!’
With Jimmy wailing they pushed on, the sound of the river coming closer and closer and closer; and then it exploded into view in a burst of colour and noise and movement and Carter dragged Jimmy to a halt. There was a steep drop directly ahead of them, sheer rock falling into the fast wide flow that cascaded violently over pebbles and large water-polished boulders.
‘Where are we?’ came Jimmy’s panicked voice.
Carter’s twelve-year-old gaze swept along the river bank. And then he saw it: a huge wide pipe crossing the river. A makeshift bridge whose interior was used to carry sewage. It was bright green and had two high iron-railing fences at each end to protect its precious cargo from the abuse of vandals.
‘This way.’
They ran along the top of the river cliff towards the pipe.
The boots of Crowley and his band of followers -Glass, Trigger and Johnny Jones, and a couple of nameless giggling girls in the chase for fun and the cheap thrill of bullying - thundered after the two boys. Rain started to fall from a suddenly dark sky.
The narrow ledge rapidly became muddy, slippery and treacherous. Jimmy clung with one hand to Carter, and with his other to clumps of grass, his mouth gasping at the sudden violent downpour, his lips twitching with fear and surprise at this sudden change in their fortunes . .
‘You’re making me wet!’ screamed Crowley from behind them, his logic twisted, his hatred a physical entity living like a demon within his big fists.
Carter stopped and turned, his hair plastered to his head. Crowley was grinning at him from the beginnings of the narrow ledge; behind him his worms jostled, vying to see what was happening. Carter heard the giggles of the girls, Mandy and Trish, the stink of their cheap child-whore perfume drifting through the rain.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ said Carter, his voice low and suddenly dangerous.
‘Or what?’ said Crowley. ‘I’ll do to you what I fucking did to Morris. And he’s still in the fucking hospital.’ ‘Why don’t you just leave us alone?’
Crowley said nothing, just grinned a real nasty grin. His shaved head gleamed under the rain as the smirk fell from his face, leaving a mocking evil in its wake.
‘We know you’re strong,’ said Carter wearily, wiping rain from his own face. ‘What have you got to prove?’
‘Nothing,’ snapped Crowley. ‘Nothing at all. I just like hurting people.’
Jimmy shook Carter’s arm, his grip tight.
‘What, little brother?’
‘I’m frightened.’
‘Come on, we’ll go across the pipe. The girls won’t be able to follow - because they’re girls. I can see them getting fed up already - they didn’t expect to get wet.’
‘I don’t think I can get across the pipe - we tried before, remember?’
‘But you’re bigger now,’ said Carter soothingly, despair creeping into the edges of his soul. He tugged at Jimmy’s hand; obediently, the younger boy followed.
Why wouldn’t Crowley give up?
Why didn’t he clear off and torture somebody else?
They crept along the muddy ledge over the suddenly raging river. The drop below the two boys was terrifying, at least thirty feet down to rocks and the raging waters beneath. They edged along and, glancing up, Carter gritted his teeth. Crowley, Glass, Johnny Jones and Trigger were following. They had left the whining mud-splattered girls behind.
It became a race.
A slippery, treacherous race.
Sliding in mud, grabbing on to the wet grass for support, they edged along towards the distant green sewerage pipe; the fans of iron at each end - designed to stop people using the wide pipe as a bridge as well as to protect it from vandals - grew slowly closer, gleaming slick in the rain.
‘Are they getting any nearer?’ gasped Jimmy. He was splashed with mud, his face red with exertion, his hands bleeding from the sharp blades of grass and occasional thorns.
‘No,’ said Carter.
They raced on. Once Jimmy slipped and Carter grabbed his collar, hauling the younger boy back onto the ledge. After a few minutes the pipe loomed close, gleaming under the rain, a wet, gradually sloping green tube connecting the two banks over the raging torrent—
They reached one end of the pipe, panting for breath, and Carter leapt lightly onto the slick surface and helped Jimmy up. ‘You remember? Remember last time how you climbed?’
‘I ... I think so,’ said Jimmy.
‘You little bastards!’ shouted Crowley, still wrestling his way through the mud. He was splashed and coated with it and now his face displayed true fury and a controlled hatred. His black Guinness T-shirt was plastered to his rotund and stocky barrel frame.
Carter hoisted Jimmy up, and the boy grasped the iron rungs; his feet found purchase on the horizontal cross bars and he began to climb. Carter jumped up behind his brother and hand over hand they climbed to the top. Jimmy tentatively reached across and eased himself over the crooked lip, with Carter close behind, giving him support—
They climbed down and landed lightly on the other side.
Crowley reached the foot of the iron fan. He grasped the vertical bars, pressed his face against them and glared at Carter and Jimmy - only a foot away from him but protected by this barrier.
‘Better get used to that look,’ said Carter.
‘I’m going to kill you, then make you watch as I smash and kick your little shit of a blind brother to fucking death,’ said Crowley, illogical as always. He spat through the bars at Carter who backed away, turning to follow his brother tentatively across the slippery pipe—
Crowley, Trigger, Johnny Jones and Glass were all climbing, Crowley in the lead as was his right by physical strength. His boots made short work of the climb. He launched his body over the top and landed in a crouch. His gaze lifted and fastened on the retreating backs of Carter and Jimmy.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
Carter and Jimmy turned at the sound.
‘You’ve got nowhere to run,’ growled Crowley, his voice husky and filled with the heady emotion of the hunt and its climax: the kill.
The rain pounded; in the distance thunder rumbled, the snarling of the storm. Black cumulonimbus towered over the boys - insignificant insects far below against the tiny glossy green pipe. Beneath the pipe the river raged, its torrent crashing across the stones in a fury of savage, natural power.
Carter moved protectively in front of Jimmy. Jimmy’s hand came to rest on Carter’s shoulder.
‘What’s happening?’ whispered the younger boy.
Crowley moved closer. Grunting, the other boys landed on the pipe behind him and moved to back Crowley up, s
lipping and sliding on the wet surface, their faces split into grins.
They had played his game before.
And the outcome was always the same ...
Pain.
‘You want to fight me here?’ sneered Carter, peering nervously over the edge of the pipe.
‘Why not?’ growled Crowley.
And then—
‘Remember it, Carter? Remember the details, the gory details? Don’t push it away like a pussy—’
There came a sudden wail.
An abrupt and shocked cry, filled with desperation ...
Jimmy slid from the pipe, hands trying feverishly to grasp the slick wet metal. He slid from view, his scream echoing forlornly through the rain—
The slap of the impact sent a shiver through Carter.
But he did not look down.
He stared; stared hard, icily at Johnny Jones, at Trigger, at Glass; and then stared with an infinity of hatred at Crowley. The stances of the boys had changed; they were leaning, peering over the edge, rain pouring down around them.
Crowley was the first to look up, his face ashen, transfixed by Carter’s dark stare.
‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘You see? You see his fucking head?’
‘All his brains came out...’ whispered Trigger.
The boys’ faces were locked in masks of shock; their eyes wide, their mouths forming silent Os.
Carter did not look down. He stared, arms hanging limply by his sides, dark eyes drilling into Crowley - and the others ...
Crowley took a step back.
‘Don’t fucking stare at me, Carter - it’s all your fucking fault! You brought him here!’
Carter said nothing.
The storm pounded him with its darkness.
Trigger and Johnny Jones turned, ran down the pipe towards the metal fan; they were closely followed by Glass and the three boys climbed the iron grillework and thudded heavily into the mud on the opposite side, leaving—
Crowley, facing Carter.