by Andy Remic
Carter rolled his head, easing the tension in his neck. His hand came to rest on his Browning. It was cool and reassuring, battered and yet - perfect. His friend. His comrade in death. His metal lover.
‘Yeah, Kara Red,’ said Mongrel at last.
Carter propped himself up on one elbow again, momentarily intrigued. ‘Red? Strange name?’
‘Nickname,’ grunted Mongrel, pulling out a packet of cigarettes and offering one to Carter. Carter, with a look of pain, waved the weed away and Mongrel laughed a hearty cruel laugh. He lit up, inhaled deeply and winced as smoke stung his eyes. Gravely, he croaked, ‘Kara Red -she’ll take you to bed, and fucking bleed on you.’
Carter cringed. ‘I wish I’d never asked.’
‘That’s nothing to what you’ll soon fucking wish, mate. Right, so Tequila at the bar, pissed out of his shell, comparing his fucking tattoos with this bitch whose face, Carter - fuck me, it was that bad, putting your fist in it would be doing her favour. It was like she was sucking heifer’s arse soaked in vinegar. Like she was being seriously bum-fucked by steroid-pumped Australian donkey. Tequila comparing tattoos—’
‘Is this a long story, Mongrel? I’m pretty tired ...’
‘You’ll like it. I promise you.’
Carter sighed. ‘Go on, then.’ He eyed Mongrel’s cigarette hungrily.
‘I got eighty spare, mate.’
‘I’ve given up. As from now.’
‘Only in body, but not in soul.’
‘Just tell your fucking story before I change my fucking mind and shoot you.’
‘Temper, temper. Tequila comparing tattoos with this death-bitch, they talking about fade and quality of lines and other drunken arsery. I wander over, staggering, sloshing beer down my front like real man should - just as this bitch announce in high-pitched donkey-cackle that she’s got tattoo on her big toe.
“‘Let’s see it,” I say, playing with one of my few remaining broken teeth. This Kara goes through this lengthy rigmarole, kicks off her shoes, peels off her blue and black striped tights - class bird, this - and then peels off her sweat-soaked sock to reveal red rose laid delicately across the skin of her large toe, toenail missing, presumed dead. Me and Tequila, we exchange glances, and it a fucking miracle we didn’t puke our beer back into our glasses and I peers at her through the old beer goggles and says, “Does it smell like rose?”
‘This Kara stares back at me, without a hint of humour. “Nah!” she squawks. “It smells like Stilton.” We reeled at disgust of situation, and as you imagine, outcome was as you expect.’
Carter chuckled. ‘You shagged her?’
‘Da.’ Mongrel nodded. ‘Nothing wrong with that - when class cheese-bitch offers roll with her Stilton feet, you take it on chin like man and accept it like drunken arse with possibility of no future.’
Carter stared long and hard at Mongrel as the huge ugly ex-squaddie finished his cigarette and immediately lit another, coughing on the blue smoke.
‘We live in different worlds, Mongrel.’
‘It get worse.’
‘How can it fucking possibly get worse?’
Mongrel grinned. Most of his teeth were missing. Carter often wondered how he chewed, but every foodstuff imaginable simply slid into Mongrel’s gaping maw and disappeared without any apparent need for mandibles. Steak never caused him a single problem. Bacon was shredded with ease.
‘Well, I’m shagging this Kara, right, and she really going for it - sweaty arse high in air, me on my back, her tits wobbling like jellies in dark above my face. She pumping me like fucking milking machine and moaning and screeching like mangling of badly meshed tank gears. I thinking I proper king, despite her smell, but then - and this gross even me out, mate - she farts: proper evil-stinking cloud of poisonous mustard gas that engulf fucking room like fucking nuclear winter.’
‘Mongrel, that is bad.’
‘It get worse,’ Mongrel threatened for the second time.
‘How ... no, no, just finish the story and then I can get my head down.’
‘Har. Well, this Kara Red, she shit all over me.’
A silence followed.
Carter stared hard at Mongrel.
‘Really?’
‘Da.’
‘She, like, shit. All over you?’
‘Da.’ Mongrel beamed, and smoked his cigarette.
‘Did this bother you?’
‘Kanyechno. I threw her down stairs.’
‘Is that the end of the story?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Mongrel, you’re a fucking animal - but I concede, Kara Red was, shall we say, a thousand times worse.’
‘She change her name to Kara Brown after that. After she got casts taken off her legs. But then, at least it gave her opportunity to air her fucking Edam feet.’
‘Stilton.’
‘Whatever.’
Carter finally managed to catch an hour’s sleep. He awoke groggily, Mongrel passed him another cup of tea, and he resigned himself to a smoke.
‘You see anything?’
‘It’s as dead as a croaked beetle out there.’
They packed up their gear and, several hours before dawn, set out on the KTM LC7 bikes with stealth mode engaged. Carter rode one machine, Mongrel the other. The bikes left the fields and woods leading down from the deserted hilltop and joined up with narrow tarmac tributaries, each side dusted with gravel and loose stone and spreading off into moonlit fields. A river flowed to their left and they cruised along in silence without lights, Mongrel with his M24 gun across his lap and holding onto the KTM with one hand, eyes focused and looking for trouble.
They travelled the dark roads for an hour, only passing a couple of cars - a Mercedes and a Skoda - which they skimmed past in silent dark blurs. Finally, leaving the roads behind, they headed up dirt trails until they finally pulled the bikes off the tracks and rode, standing on foot pegs, over rough ground until they halted the machines on hissing Brembos and killed the hot engines.
They cammed up the KTM stealth machines with ferns and branches. Then Mongrel checked his ECube and they moved off through the gently rustling trees, packs shouldered and M24 sub-machine guns at the ready, proceeding patiently - and with care. As if their lives depended on it.
Which they did.
‘There.’
Carter squinted at the distant cabin and allowed his breathing to ease. He pulled out his Browning and checked the mag for the hundredth time, then flicked free the safety on the carbine.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You cover me ...’
Carter moved forward, and Mongrel rocked back on his heels, squinting around in the pre-dawn glow. Carter approached the rough-walled cabin warily, weapon ready for action, mind screaming abuse and firing him into a full adrenalin state ... he reached the doorway and dropped to a crouch, glancing back at Mongrel who was covering arcs of fire.
‘You need at least three men for this,’ chastised Kade.
‘You offering your services?’
‘Well, you know what they say: if the going gets tough—’
‘Then Kade gets going?’
‘Fuck you, Carter:’
‘Temper, temper, little man.’
Carter moved warily into the cabin. It was deserted and he moved cautiously through the rooms, but his sharp eyes could see nothing. He was just turning to leave when he saw it - a tiny square of glass missing from the window. An ideal size and position for a—
‘Mindnuke,’ said Kade.
‘Hmm ‘
Carter touched the edges of the hole; they were perfectly smooth and had obviously been sucked by an ECube ready for MNK insertion. And an MNK meant...
Nex.
Carter returned to Mongrel. ‘He was here.’
‘Fucker, I fucking knew it. They should burn those PopBot scouts. They’re a waste of fucking time!’
‘The question is, what happened next?’
‘No other signs?’
It took Carter an hour to pick up the trail. The sun was rising steadily in the sky, making both men feel uneasy.
Carter pointed. ‘You see it?’
‘See what?’
‘Look closely.’
‘What at?’
Carter sighed. ‘Boot imprint - Spiral issue. They were fucking here all right, and running in that direction.’ Carter pointed with the muzzle of his carbine.
‘Come on.’
‘Wait... slowly, Mongrel. These things take time. And let’s not forget the DemolSquad’s recent fucking disappearance.’
They moved cautiously through the woodland, from tree to tree. Stopping, checking distances, checking other trees and foliage for signs of passing. Occasionally they risked a scan with the ECube, but knew now not to trust the device at all ... it seemed that the Nex were playing their covert games once again and had access to digital superiority.
Carter crouched beside a tree with strange markings in the bark. ‘Something big, heavy and metal hit this.’
‘Like what?’
Carter shrugged, ‘A bike, something like that. I tell you, Mongrel, some bastard has tried hard to cover this up - there should be fucking tracks everywhere. And look - even metal particles have been removed from the trunk.’
‘Could it have been Jam’s bike?’
‘I’m not sure. But it looks like we’re going in the right direction.’
They squatted in a clump of thick bushes where the valley dropped off to one side. They watched for several hours as the sun toiled across the sky. A cooler wind blew from the south but it did little to relieve them of the sweat drenching their thick clothing.
Carter had pointed out the bridge leading over the valley, with rocks clustered at either end. They had spent a good hour watching the small log cabin down in the valley bottom, but had seen no activity at either location.
‘I think we at dead end,’ said Mongrel eventually.
Sweating beneath the bushes, prickled and poked and uncomfortable, Carter pulled free his ECube and activated the tiny black alloy device. Lights flashed in his eyes and audio signals blipped.
‘That’s ... strange.’
‘What?’ Mongrel shuffled closer, smelling of fallen leaves.
‘Neither the bridge nor the cabin appear on the ECube. They’re invisible to the scanners ...’ Carter shook the alloy device.
‘Yeah, that always work for me - four billion dollars’ worth of development technology fail to function so give the little fucker shake. Kicks it up its arse good.’
‘I don’t understand,’ muttered Carter. Then he killed the tiny device and glanced out from their shelter.
‘You want go look?’ asked Mongrel cautiously, staring into the valley, his eyes straining to detect movement.
Carter nodded.
‘I think we wait for nightfall,’ growled Mongrel. ‘I think good idea we sit back, wait, then get closer look without sun bouncing off our guns to give away our position, eh, Carter? Carter?’
Mongrel turned.
Carter had gone.
‘Fucker!’
Mongrel crawled from beneath the prickling bushes to see Carter gliding towards the rocks shielding the bridge; he dropped down and disappeared. Mongrel eased his own bulk forward, keeping trees and bushes to his right -until he finally stopped in a good spot and glanced all around, nervous now, licking sweat from his lips.
He glanced around for Carter, but could not see the man.
‘Mad fucker,’ he grumbled. ‘Why we not wait for night? You get us both shot!’
And then he saw Carter - underneath the bridge, fastened as if by magnets and moving beneath the thick wooden boards which stretched out between the two horizontal iron H-section supports.
‘What he doing?’
And then Mongrel saw the dull glint of a machine-gun nest - just a hint. It lay concealed among the rocks and he caught a fleeting glimpse of black - a barrel sleeve with drilled holes for cooling during firing. It could be nothing else ... and it was positioned in a brilliant natural defensive location overlooking the only way to cross the valley:
The bridge.
‘What you doing, Carter? You get yourself fucking drilled!’
But Carter was committed and, eyeing the bridge, Mongrel knew that he himself had neither the skill to negotiate the structure in the way that Carter was doing nor the strength to sustain his own body weight for such a lengthy climb.
I need to lose bit of weight. If I survive that long, he added to himself.
Sweat rolled into Carter’s eyes like acid and he blinked as it stung him. He licked his dry lips and found a fresh handhold, moving over another few inches beneath the thick ancient timbers of the bridge.
The temperature beneath the bridge was high, the air humid, stagnant. And he couldn’t reach his water canteen. Bitch.
Slowly, Carter advanced, his mind switching between images of Natasha lying supine in the hospital bed with tubes emerging from different parts of her body, pictures of the baby on the scan imager - a tiny white blob against a background of glossy black, barely distinguishable as head, torso, arms and legs but miraculous nevertheless -and then to Jam’s smiling, cocky, mischievous face, stub-bled, a dangling loose cigarette, and holding the coordinates for the machine that could save both Carter’s woman and their child.
The wood above him was bleached by the Slovenian sun; it creaked occasionally and tried continually to spit dust into Carter’s upturned face.
He moved on in this inverted crawl, inch by painful inch, boots tucking into crevices, fingers finding holes and gaps, muscles screaming at him.
Don’t blow your position, warned his brain.
But another part of him, the shell inhabited by Kade, wanted to rush in with guns blazing and kill everybody, slaughter them like sheep. But then, what did he want? He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for any more ... surely anybody who had covered their tracks so well out in the woods wouldn’t leave Jam’s body or his KTM motorcycle lying casually around?
And then he heard it.
A low engine rumble.
No, he cursed. It can’t fucking be!
But it was: a truck, a big eight-tonne vehicle with heavy off-road tyres and a canvas roof. It approached with a steady growl and a meshing - a thrashing - of gears and Carter worked harder, moved faster, but realised—
He could not beat the truck.
‘Son of a bitch.’
He heard the vehicle drop two gears, its engine pitch increasing on the slight incline before the bridge - and then twin heavy thumps as the front tyres mounted the span. They clattered across the thick wooden beams, and Carter was almost knocked from his perch by the initial crashing impact. He gritted his teeth, tightened his muscles, and prayed ...
The truck’s six rear wheels slammed onto the bridge.
The whole structure started to vibrate.
Badly.
Carter felt a shout welling in his throat as the truck’s wheels bludgeoned the wood and vibrations pulsated through his arms and legs. Dust and dirt poured down into his face, causing him to cough and choke. Spitting, Carter glanced down at the terrible drop beneath him—
The shaking and battering seemed to last for ever.
It pounded him like a piece of metal between a hammer and an anvil.
It felt like a train rolling over his head.
And then it was gone.
Carter choked back a sneeze and cursed, his eyes slits of anger, and then continued his horizontal climb with fingers and arms burning, his Browning digging into his ribs. He finally reached the side and swung himself onto the tiny narrow ledge underneath the bridge, panting. Then, climbing around the iron struts, he pulled himself up a little, peered around, hoisted himself up onto the rocks and leapt into the tiny protected circle of the machine-gun nest.
It was small and circular, sand scattered on the floor. The large T80 Heckler & Koch heavy machine gun sat on a tripod pointing out across the open expanse of bridge and was manned by a—
A merc?
Human.
Carter grinned at the sudden surprised and horrified look on the man’s bearded face. He slammed his fist into the soldier’s nose - twice, three times, splattering blood across the sand and pounding the man into unconsciousness. Carter peered out from the back of the machine-gun nest, grinning fiercely as he saw Nex dismounting neatly from the back of the truck that had tried to dislodge him and send him tumbling into the valley. Grunting, he dragged the tripod across the sand, checked the belt of ammunition, and levelled the T80 out of the back of the machine-gun nest. The Nex had assembled in ranks of eight - twenty-four in all - and they stood to attention with weapons by their sides, their copper eyes focused.
Carter waited, his own eyes bright, picturing Natasha ...
And he remembered the Nex outside the Spiral HQ as the quake pulverised London - murdering the innocent, fleeing Spiral operatives, men and women, without remorse or even a flicker of emotion. To Carter, the situation had looked suspiciously like a trap.
The Nex outside the truck were joined by more of their kind, mixed with a few mercenary soldiers. ‘Sorry, boys,’ muttered Carter, feeling himself go cold and dead inside. You’re fighting on the wrong fucking side ... hope the money tasted good and you spent it well.’
He opened fire.
The T80 roared and bucked beneath his hands as a hail of bullets flew across the narrow stretch of land, mowing down the Nex in a swathe of bloodied flesh.
Some reached for weapons.
Some turned to sprint—
Some leapt.
All were pulped by the onslaught of the heavy machine gun.
Scythed down.
Slaughtered.
Bullets slammed into the rear of the truck, puncturing all six rear tyres in tiny deflating explosions. The vehicle settled slowly down.
Carter released the trigger and his pent-up breath and surveyed the destruction with a cold eye. He heard a moan from the mercenary at his feet, looked down, saw the man struggling with his own SA1000 and palmed his Browning, placing a single shot in the contract soldier’s brains. The merc crumpled back, eyes glassy and staring. Carter sighed and shook his head.