Quake

by Andy Remic

  Carter had walked past her, thrown the gun into the lake and Roxi had left him, hurriedly pulling on her clothes, their manic animal sex of the previous night forgotten in her need to get away from him ... From the shores of the lake he had watched her leave.

  Returned, lain on the bed where he could still smell her sex and the lingering bright dregs of her perfume ...

  And cried ...

  ‘I believe you have a problem.’

  Carter snapped back to reality. He glanced sideways at her. He found it strange - almost surreal - to be talking to somebody he had assumed he would never see again. It had been years - four or five at least, he could no longer remember, since she had walked out of that cabin room. She had not reported him - his threats, his apparent insanity. He had contacted her ten, maybe twenty times but she had ignored his calls and he could not blame her.

  Their missions for Spiral had never crossed from that moment forward. They had never met.

  Not until now.

  ‘We all have problems,’ said Carter coolly.

  ‘With Natasha? The ECubes are alive with news of the quakes ripping across the world and the resurgence of the Nex soldiers. I saw Natasha’s name mentioned ... she was injured ... is injured. I’m sorry.’

  Carter nodded, watching the sea.

  ‘You here on Spiral business?’ he said, finally.

  ‘Yes.’ Roxi produced a cigarette, lit it, then passed it to Carter and lit another for herself. He could taste her subtle lipstick on the weed and long distant memories came flooding back—

  Her naked, arching back—

  Her soft skin, the welcoming velvet between her legs ...

  ‘No,’ he hissed to himself, exhaling smoke. He met her strong gaze and she smiled, hand reaching out, stroking his stubbled cheek, thumb rubbing at a mark on the end of his chin with obvious affection.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’ Her words crashed like sweet thunder in his brain.

  ‘I missed you,’ he found himself saying.

  She reached forward to kiss him, but he halted her, smoke stinging his eyes and carried away on the breeze. ‘No, Roxi. Not now, not like this. I loved you once ... still love you. But my mind is fucked up - I haven’t the time for complications.’

  ‘All life is a complication,’ she said, moving closer, her voice husky. He looked deep into those green eyes and her beauty was astonishing to him. He could feel her body pressed against his and he was waiting for Kade to jump in, but the dark side of his soul had apparently vanished ...

  Carter pulled away, and took a long drink of the whisky.

  ‘I cannot. Will not.’

  Roxi smiled. ‘I hated you. For a long time.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you? You kept me in the dark. He forced us apart, wanted me dead. But what hurt me the most was that you did not tell me. You couldn’t trust me, and that hurt more than a bullet in the face.’

  ‘I was ... scared. Scared I would lose you.’

  ‘Like you’re scared you’re going to lose Natasha?’

  ‘No, that’s different.’ Carter sighed, and took another long drink. He turned his back on Roxi and it took all his strength, all his will-power not to look round.

  ‘Maybe in another life,’ he said softly.

  She came up behind him. Kissed his ear. ‘I still love you. I always will...’ She laughed. ‘Maybe in another lifetime, as you say, my love.’ And then she was gone, gliding into the darkness.

  Carter shivered, retaining her scent.

  He remembered it well.

  It reminded him of... sex. And more.

  It reminded him of love ...

  Carter retired bitterly to his room to finish the bottle.

  Carter was spinning, spinning down into dark dreams and the sand was hot under his bare feet, ragged trousers flapping around his ankles as the Arabs marched him out into the desert and the sun scorched his back.

  Shit. Cairo7.

  The Battle for the City.

  Occasionally, the whip would crack against the bare raw pink skin of Carter’s sunburned shoulders and through sweat and blood he glanced left at Slater - who grinned a savage grin through his own individual pain - and Carter ground his teeth as the leather bit deep. The Arab screamed at him and he whirled in the sand with eyes narrowing and lips mouthing motherfucker—

  ‘Let me,’ Kade had whispered.

  Like silk.

  Smothering his fevered brain in an ice-cool shroud.

  ‘No.’

  They heard the scream of the fighters. They thundered overhead, long and dark and gleaming, engines glowing and their noise a sonic boom that filled the heavens. Cairo stood, a massive swathe of buildings and here, from the distant desert, the pyramids squatted in front of the group - the glowing scene a vast expanse of beauty, almost a perfect postcard, with the city ranged behind the pyramids. Then the bombs began to fall—

  The pyramids were shattered. Smashed into rubble. Cairo was crushed by HighJ and spinning silver steel.

  Carter and the other captured Spiral agents watched with mingled horror, fascination, fear and awe as buildings were swept away in a tide of fire and billowing bright gas. An armoured Egyptian column caught beside the pyramids was lifted on a wall of flame and sent spinning and howling up into the fire-filled sky.

  Machine guns rattled.

  Men screamed ...

  Carter watched solemnly as the distant soldiers fought. More fighters howled. More buildings were destroyed and, slowly, the Cairo skyline began to change, to warp, to disintegrate ...

  That way!’

  The whip cracked and sub-machine guns poked into backs.

  Carter and the ten others were herded further into the desert, away from the savage destruction behind them. They stumbled on through the sand.

  On they ploughed.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ snarled Slater - and caught the butt of a sub-machine gun in the jaw for his persistence.

  The Arabs, all brutal and battle-hardened soldiers, herded the prisoners through the fast-falling darkness. The men stumbled clumsily across the sand, hands bound tight and bodies covered with the marks of heavy beating.

  The group halted, and were all given sips of water.

  Carter felt himself growing weary, and for once he welcomed the return of Kade.

  ‘They’re taking you to be executed.’

  ‘No, we are political prisoners. There will be an exchange. Maybe a ransom.’

  ‘No. They know you are Spiral. They will execute you in cold blood. ‘

  ‘Why don’t they kill us here, then? Why not now?’

  ‘They need fucking permission from their leader, a man called A‘shiek Elmora. You should keep more up to date with your fucking reading, Carter. ‘

  One of the captors, a short squat powerful man dressed in a grey shawl and wearing sandals, slowly approached. He offered Carter water, but as Carter reached for the cup he poured it at Carter’s feet. His eyes glistened with challenge.

  ‘You the Spiral men!’ he snarled, dark eyes filled with hatred. ‘You have killed many of our people ...’

  ‘No,’ said Carter, shaking his head.

  The man pulled free a long curved knife, the blade black and heavily chipped from battle use. Carter stared up at the Arab, could see the twenty other shamag-cowled men surrounding him. Camels were grunting wearily in the heat and the drone of a distant Land Rover sounded in the desert air.

  ‘Let me,’ crooned Kade.

  ‘Let me fuck them ...

  ‘Let me eat their souls. ‘

  Carter had smiled at the man then, staring at the scars across his cheeks with hate-filled eyes and said out loud, dry voice a croaking command to slaughter:

  ‘Fuck them, Kade.’

  And slitted feline eyes opened on a desert scene carved in black and white.

  Kade calmed his breathing. The scene was bleached - shades of desert grey that suited Kade just fine as he tested the strength of his bound wrists and glanc
ed down. Rope? ‘Fucking amateurs,’ he snarled and—

  Kade leapt towards the Egyptian, and the knife came up in a clumsy movement so sudden was Kade’s attack. He twisted, and the blade sliced neatly through the rope, freeing Kade’s hands. His boot came up, connecting with the Arab’s chest as he whirled and took the curved blade from the man who grunted in pain and surprise, stumbling back under the force of the heavy blow to teeter and fall -

  Everything seemed to move so slowly.

  Kade grinned.

  Kade leapt again, the blade hacking into the Arab even as the surprised man fell - and as he hit the sand the man’s blood gushed out in a pulsing arc. Kade stabbed him in the face and left him gurgling as the rest of the twenty men turned their attention towards this blur of an escaped prisoner—

  Shouts split the cool desert night - tinged with panic. Sub-machine guns were cocked in twitching hands.

  Kade surged forward with a savage snarl. The blade slashed left, then right, leaving scarlet globules hanging suspended for microseconds as throats gaped wide and blood flooded from the wounds ... Kade spun low and rammed the curved knife into another Arab’s groin, wrenching it to the side as the man screamed, hands clutching at the warm flow of blood. Kade smoothly took his sub-machine gun ... instantly bullets blasted from the muzzle - heads and chests caved in under the heavy impact of flying metal as Kade strode forward, deep into the group, with the gun hammering away in his powerful death-dealing hands—

  Bodies flipped to the sand, torn wide open. Heads popped. Jaws were smashed from faces. Bullets chewed flesh and Kade swept his dark gaze without emotion across the men who died screaming and scrabbling at his feet...

  The noise slowly died down.

  Camels were barking with nostrils flared at the scent of blood and at the noise of the guns. They stamped on the sand, tethered and nervous.

  Two men were groaning, lying prostrate on the desert floor.

  Not a single Arab had fired a shot.

  ‘Carter!’

  Kade’s head snapped left. The other Spiral men were bound, and Kade grinned at them savagely and said, ‘Just give me a moment to provide an encore, gentlemen.’

  Kade picked up another sub-machine gun and moved to the two groaning men. He knelt beside the first, looked into the dark cruel eyes, then smashed the butt of the gun against his forehead several times, cracking open the skull.

  ‘Carter, man, what the fuck are you doing?’

  Kade lifted the gun and pointed it at the group of captured Spiral agents.

  ‘You got a fucking problem?’ he screamed, insanity dancing in his eyes, across his twisted face. ‘I’ll fucking kill you all, I’ll fucking smear your blood on my face and—’

  He glanced down.

  Shot the last Egyptian in the face. Emptied the magazine until there was nothing left of the man’s head, just a dark purple pulp with shards of bone splintered obscenely on top of a bullet-torn neck stump strung with skeins of twitching muscle and ligament.

  The body jerked spasmodically, a last pulsing of its blood staining the sand.

  Kade climbed to his feet, staring around at the twenty dead bodies. He realised that he was breathing hard and he dropped the gun to the ground and started to laugh. ‘Welcome to Egypt,’ he screamed as the other Spiral operatives looked on in horror. ‘Yeah, welcome to fucking Cairo as well!’

  And instead of this being the end of the horror, it was, in fact, just the beginning.

  Carter awoke, shivering. The whisky bottle was by his side, drained, and his head was pounding. Weak light crept from behind the shutters. A diseased rat had crawled into his mouth and died.

  Cairo7.

  He shivered again, horrified at the dream - at the reliving of Kade’s first bout of true insanity, on show for others to appreciate.

  Before Cairo7 Carter had always retained some semblance of control. But in the desert that night, Kade had pushed Carter into a deep mental recess and locked the door. Kade had mocked him. Kade had punished him. Kade had fucked him very severely.

  Carter still remembered, as they made a cross-desert dash for friendly lines, the fear emanating from his own men, the other Spiral agents whom Kade had reluctantly released. They sat near him only so not to antagonise him further. They shared their water only so that he would not shoot them in the face.

  Not Slater.

  Slater had watched him with a dark intelligence.

  Slater had shown no fear.

  It was as if Slater had understood.

  Carter heard their comments as they made camp without fire in wadis, hunkering under outcroppings of rock or in shallow caves. They had whispered among themselves.

  ‘Did you see him move?’

  ‘He was so fucking fast...’

  ‘Like a fucking demon ...’

  ‘He killed twenty armed men single-handed—’

  ‘They couldn’t even fucking touch him!’

  ‘And what about when he unloaded a full clip into that poor bastard’s face?’

  ‘He was fucking insane ... did you see it? In his eyes? He was possessed ...’

  Carter rolled from the bed and stood, naked, scratching his belly. He moved to the sink and poured himself a glass of water, downing it in one. His door burst open and Mongrel stood there, fully kitted and ready to move.

  ‘Carter?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The Priest is a couple of miles away. The ECube comm says he’ll be fifteen minutes. Get your shit together.’

  Carter smiled at Mongrel. ‘I told you not to let me drink the whole fucking bottle.’

  ‘Hey.’ Mongrel spread his hands, gaze fixed on Carter’s face. ‘You looked like you needed it, mate. I’ll meet you out front in five.’ He stared, frowning, at Carter’s dangling penis, his nakedness, realising Carter would need time to dress. ‘Better make that ten. And don’t forget to put your fucking pants on!’

  Then he was gone, leaving the door wide open and a cool breeze invading Carter’s privacy.

  ‘You’re an animal,’ muttered Carter, searching, eyes bloodshot, for his clothes.

  Carter and Mongrel sat in the dawn sunshine, looking down over the steep winding trail and waiting for The Priest.

  Carter sipped at his steaming coffee.

  ‘You feeling bad?’ muttered Mongrel with a smirk.

  ‘I’ve felt better,’

  ‘Did you speak with Roxi last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you fuck her?’

  ‘Mongrel! Natasha is dying and my only thought is of saving her life ... do you really rank me so low in the scheme of things? Lower than a fucking reptile?’

  ‘I would have.’

  ‘She’s pretty,’ acknowledged Carter, ‘but I think my energies are best put to other uses. And my bastard ribs are cracked, I swear it. That bastard Jam didn’t half give me a kicking ...’

  ‘Have you thought any more about him? And that ex-Spiral fucker Gol?’

  Carter downed his coffee and refilled his mug from the jug, tipping in plenty of sugar and milk. He sighed, shaking his head. ‘Hey, Mongrel, as far as I’m concerned the whole world has gone mad. We’ve got earthquakes ripping up various countries, Jam transformed into God only knows what sort of experimental entity by Durell, Gol back from the dead, and now I’ve got Roxi drifting into my life from a past I had practically forgotten - a past where I tried to murder her. I can’t really say that anything else could possibly surprise me.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what The Priest has to say.’

  ‘It better be pretty fucking damn important,’ growled Carter, ‘because he’s wasting my time right now.’

  ‘You soon ask him,’ rumbled Mongrel, gesturing at the trail.

  The Priest laboured up the path.

  His grey robes flapped around his titanic frame, his bushy beard swayed in out-of-synch rhythm with his rosary beads, and his sandals trod the rocky sand trail with an awkward step. He carried his Bible in both outstretched hands, like a ma
gic talisman, a totem of power.

  Carter and Mongrel watched the barrel-chested man’s long haul up the mountain.

  It gave them some small pleasure to see him sweat like a pig.

  The Priest finally arrived on the plateau and smiled down from his great height, sweat streaming from his forehead and great patches of it staining the cloth under his arms. ‘Behold, my children!’

  ‘At last, the prodigal returns,’ said Carter through a veil of smoke. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes. Six sugars.’

  ‘Six?’

  ‘A growing lad like me needs to keep up his strength. Now, down to business.’ From within his robes he brought out two ECubes and passed one to Carter, one to Mongrel.

  ‘Updated?’ asked Carter.

  ‘More than an update, my son,’ said The Priest. ‘These are new revisions, running V5.0 ICARUS op systems, now up to 18GHz dual-RISC processors and 1024 gig of Optical-RAM. The whole network has been revised after many recent breaches by the Nex - the whole encryption stage has been revamped, and if you key in your DSquad code then you can see the schematics and check out all the new functions. There are a few new little tricks. The Lord would be proud of such innovation.’

  Carter and Mongrel handed over their old units. The Priest took his coffee and sat cross-legged on the grass. The sea crashed distantly, and a cool breeze ruffled his beard and cooled the sweat on his brow.

  ‘I have answers,’ he said, simply.

  ‘What is going on?’

  ‘Since we sunk the Spiral_mobile battleship just over a year ago, we have become complacent. We thought the Nex were on the decline. The SAD teams were doing their job, exterminating what Nex filth they could ferret out in small pitched battles. But we have all been wrong. The Nex soldiers that the SAD teams were taking out were rejects - the weak and the lame. Apparently, when a Nex is created there can be many problems with the DNA coding and restructuring - the blending, as Durell would call it. For the past year we have been fed these mewling weaklings as decoys while Durell built an army.’

  ‘An army?’ rumbled Mongrel. ‘You mean ...’

  ‘We estimate that Durell has a quarter of a million Nex soldiers, although he could have more. He has also enlisted many thousands of mercenaries to do his bidding. It would seem that his company - Leviathan Fuels -has provided him with the funding he needs.’