by Al Ewing
It was in Berlin - cold Berlin, with its stone and its iron, in the depths of winter.
I was killing time, waiting to garrotte an industrialist in a penthouse apartment somewhere in what was once East Berlin. Acting like a tourist, looking at the remnants of the wall and eating terrible, poorly-cooked wurst from vans that catered to those who didn't know any better. Blending in.
I looked at the inscriptions on the wall fragments and then turned around to put the wrapper and the unfinished wurst in the bin. And halted. And froze.
A man was looking at me.
This was one face in a crowd of hundreds passing along the street. He was short, and skeletal, and completely bald - no eyebrows, even. It was as though someone had taken the foetus of some huge predatory bird and fastened it into a suit. Even across the street, his eyes shone, yellow and sickly around the pupils. I remember his suit was the same sickly yellow as his eyes.
He smiled. His teeth were long and as yellow as his eyes, the gums receded. He ran a long tongue across them, then simply grinned like a skull.
I'd been afraid before. Afraid of failure, afraid of arrest and incarceration, afraid of disappointing the client, afraid of being found out, being caught, exposed, not fitting in. But this was the first time I'd ever been afraid for my life.
I hailed a taxi and told the driver to head straight to the airport. It was just past noon, and already the light was beginning to fade, and as the taxi wound slowly across the icy roads, the driver chatting amiably in backwoods German, I could see the full moon already visible beyond the clouds. By the time I'd talked my way onto the first plane heading for Heathrow, the darkness had fallen.
I sat in my window seat, looking out over the runway, feeling foolish despite the slow curdling of my gut. I'd let the client down and run away with my tail between my legs - and for what? Because a chemo patient had grinned at me in a way I didn't like?
I was cursing myself as the plane rumbled towards the runway, and by the time the acceleration sat me back heavily in my chair and the engine roar became a scream, I'd resolved to go straight back in the morning and do the job for nothing. Disappointing the customer like that was unforgivable.
And then I looked out of the window.
Something was coming across the airfield towards the plane. It was nine, perhaps ten feet tall, an immense mass of muscle and fur and purpose. Its eyes shone a sickly yellow in the half-light, and foam ran from its muzzle. I only saw it for an instant.
Around its waist were the shredded remains of a pair of yellow suit trousers.
I fully believe that if it had caught up to the plane, it would have torn it open like a tin can to get hold of me, and if the whole aeroplane had gone up in a ball of fire, it would have walked right through the inferno to get hold of me.
As the plane rose into the air, I could hear a monstrous howl of anger and frustration following it. I never returned to Berlin.
The acid burning in my muscles is stronger now. I run back the way I came, through the silent, motionless mannequins, ready to come to life the moment I let go of time. Some of the mannequins are headless, some bodiless, just a pair of legs slowly beginning to buckle. Their only crime was to get in the way of the monster.
Some of the heads have had pieces swiped out of them. I run past a girl with a bright smile and one sparkling eye. The other is missing along with a chunk of skull. She's dead, and she'll need a closed coffin, but there hasn't been time for it to register yet. In this moment, she still has her whole life ahead of her. She's maybe on her way to meet her parents, to tell them about some new man in her life, or maybe she's going out for an evening with friends. Somewhere there are four women sitting around a table in a pub with two small white wines, a lime and soda and a vodka and tonic, waiting for their friend to arrive. And they'll keep waiting, and texting, and wondering why she's blown them off, and maybe they'll check the news and find out about the bloody swathe of horror running the length of Tottenham Court Road -
Tottenham Court Road.
I forgot where I was.
I grit my teeth and turn hard right, hoping there aren't too many people in Oxford Street. I need space to move now. I focus past the burning in my muscles, the straining of the bone tissue, the new sensations of tiredness and fatigue. I have to get some distance from the wolf if I'm going to pull this off.
I duck and weave between the late-night shoppers. In my head, I'm asking absolution from everyone I pass. It doesn't want them. It wants me.
I could save dozens of lives by stopping dead right now. By letting it take me.
I could.
But I won't.
Sometimes I feel like I'm dead inside as well as out. How could I do this otherwise?
Halfway down now and turning into a shopping arcade with what I need in it. It's open late - thank God, thank whatever God would make a thing like me - and everything's still on display.
I stop dead, trainers smoking again. This time I don't pull any tricks with the sword - I'm not going to catch it the same way twice. Instead, I swing my fist into the window of the shop, reaching through a curtain of shattered glass shards, the edges scoring my flesh as I grab for the window display.
I don't know how long I have to live now. Less than a second.
I hear the jewellery store alarm ringing, low and slow, like the tolling of a funeral bell. My hand scrabbles over the glittering knick-knacks and gewgaws, grabbing a gleaming necklace and wrapping it around my knuckles, checking the card to make sure it's what I need. I'm desperate and this is a gamble - these days, you're more likely to find platinum or gold pieces in a jewellery store window.
But occasionally, you can still find something silver.
I feel something on my shoulder - a hand, now, a paw, gripping with enough force to crack the bones of a normal man, spinning me around so fast that even with time slowed to nothing I'm staring into those dripping, grinning jaws before I know it. I have a split-second, a nanosecond, a picosecond before my guts are on the floor and my head is crunching in its mouth. It's that fast.
But I react faster.
My right arm swings out in a hard punch, with all my strength behind it. The silver necklace is wrapped around my fingers like a knuckleduster. There's a crunch as my fist buries in its chest, cracking the sternum to fragments. The monster needs a massive heart to fuel that massive engine of a body. My fist fits inside it. I can feel it pumping for a moment before it stops dead.
Silver in the heart.
I let go of time, and it crashes back around me like an angry tide.
The air fills with screams, alarms, the sound of shattering glass. I feel horrified eyes on me and know that my life has changed.
The monster twitches, jerking and shuddering like a palsy victim, the foam from its jaws flowing with ever-multiplying flecks of red. The glowing red coals of its eyes burn brighter for a second before they roll back into the head. The wound I've made in its chest bubbles and festers, green pus flowing. It's not going to heal from this.
I let go of the necklace and the beast tumbles backward, pulling off my hand like a wet sock. I watch it thrash and twitch on the ground, blood and pus spreading over the floor, the muscles eaten away before my eyes, the flesh falling from the face and jaw in clumps, the suppurating chest hole actually smoking with the force of the reaction.
It's so fascinating, I don't notice the sniper who's been crouched at the other end of the arcade. The gunman who's actually used a werewolf rampage as a distraction, as a goad to get me to go where he wants me. Who programmed the monster to keep me running right where he wanted me.
All I hear is the phut of a silenced weapon and then a long needle embedding in the back of my skull.
Thunk.
I don't have time to blink before whatever he's shot into me comes to life. It burns and buzzes and hums, and my hands are shaking too badly to reach up and pull it out, and the buzzing intensifies, building and building, harsher and shriller until
it
reaches a pitch
so harsh and shrill that it is
inconceivable
And the last thought that runs through my mind before I feel the flesh of my brain shredding in my skull is:
Whodunnit?
CHAPTER FOUR
Nemesis
First comes smell.
Old, wet stone. Age. Cobwebs and dust. Something like rotted food. Metal, some wet, some rusted, some brand new. Ancient wood.
I knot my brow - the same brow I felt shredding like confetti when that whatever-it-was went off at the back of my skull. I reach up to feel what's left of my face, but something stops me - cold metal chains at my wrists, taking my weight.
Second, then, comes feeling.
Sound is third. The drip, drip, drip of water filtering through stone. Soft well-made shoes gently tapping against the cold stone floor. Pacing and scuffing. A filter tip burning as he inhales. The rattle of the chains.
I decide to go for the grand prize and open my eyes.
I'm in a dungeon.
An actual dungeon. Cold water dripping down ancient stonework, wooden benches, torture implements lined up on the wall... there's even a skeleton dangling from a set of rusted chains on the opposite wall. A spider crawls slowly in one eye socket and out the other. I don't think anyone picked that up from a doctor's surgery.
And right in the centre of the room, we have the person responsible. Not too tall - about five-eight - but stocky. Lots of muscle there, and by the way he's carrying himself he knows how to use it. Stands like a boxer - cauliflower ear on the left side of his head, broken nose... I'd lay money whoever's running this operation picked him out of a gym somewhere. It's been a while since he's been in the ring, though - he's put on a little weight, and I can't remember a boxer with a Tom Selleck like that. Black hair, steel-grey eyes, all the wrinkles around his face say he spends most of his time pulling intimidating expressions.
Armani suit. Three-piece, very fancy. He might not be the man at the top, but he's certainly high up.
The Boxer's noticed me looking at him, and he looks back. There's something sardonic in his eyes - a sense that this is business as usual. That all of this - the werewolf, the sniper, the whole complicated plan to get me out of hiding and into a dungeon - that it's all another day at the office.
I'm not sure I like him.
"Back in the land of the living, Mr Doe? Or is it the land of the dead?"
He doesn't smile at his joke. I decide not to either, or dignify it with a pithy comment of my own. Instead I start yanking my left hand against the cuff of the chains, hoping to pop the stitches. See how many jokes this bastard feels like making with his guts coiled around my fingers. But the stitches refuse to pop. It feels different, somehow.
I look up to my hand, and the wrist is whole - completely healed. My skin even looks slightly pinker, although I may be imagining it.
I tug experimentally against the manacle. How did that happen?
The Boxer snorts derisively. He's got a throaty voice - a slightly upmarket Ray Winstone. His teeth are yellowing, nicotine-stained, with a gold molar at the back of his mouth.
"An unfortunate side-effect of the weapon we used to take you down. The dart puts out a localised electro-magnetic pulse - simulates your body's own reset system to shut you down for long enough to get you here."
What the hell is he talking about?
Stall for time. I try to sound like this is all as mundane for me as it is for him, but I can feel the quaver in my voice.
"So where's here?"
The Boxer snorts again. I'm starting to hate the sound of that - if you could buy pure contempt in spray form, that's the sound it'd make coming out - but I'm not in a position to tear the top off his skull yet.
There's probably not enough there for a decent meal anyway.
"You're underneath the Tower Of London, it might interest you to know. There's a lot of history here, Doe. Both official and otherwise. We've had quite a number of your sort down here." He walks over to the wall, making a show of lifting down some ancient cast-iron pair of pincers, most likely used to tear the extremities off enemies of the crown. I almost smile.
"You're not going to get much out of me with that..."
He snorts again. I'm really getting the impression he doesn't like me. "We have our ways and means, Sonny Jim. We've been dealing with people like you for some considerable time and let me inform you that when it comes to kicking your undead knackers in, we're the experts."
"People like me?"
"Zombies. The walking dead. Those that have snuffed it but refuse to shuffle off this vale of tears until they've made my life a total bleeding misery. We've known about you lot for centuries, but only in recent times have we got a better idea of exactly what you were and developed the means to study you, give you the kicking you filthy bastards clearly deserve and finish you off for good. Previously, we made do with the latter. Set the Wulves on you."
I don't like where this is heading.
"Wolves?"
"Generally spelled with a U. Werewolves to the general public. We breed 'em." He shoots me a look, a little evaluation. "Shat yourself, did you?"
There's no point in lying.
"You would too if one of those things was trying to tear you to pieces."
He snorts. This time it's laughter.
"Too bloody right I would. But as luck would have it, they're bred to hunt and kill disgusting abominations like you and not god-fearing Londoners like me."
"I'm a Londoner..." I regret it as soon as it slips out - it sounds weak and defensive and all it does it make him look at me like I'm the last piece of crap in the doggy bin.
"You're the furthest thing from a Londoner there is, sunshine. Whereabouts were you when you woke up for the first time? Place and date."
I remember exactly where I was. A Travelodge in Muswell Hill.
"London. Muswell Hill. Ten years ago today."
He snorts again, like I've just told him the Earth was flat, or Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or Ann Coulter is a beacon of truth in the murky world of the liberal media. This isn't going well. I keep looking at the skeleton. The spider's built a web over one of the eye sockets.
"Bollocks it was. What's happened here, Sonny Jim, is your defence mechanism went into overdrive after what you did to Emmett Roscoe. The tossers in the lab coats call it 'chameleon syndrome', but I personally call it being a cunt."
I get a sinking feeling. I've never met an Emmett Roscoe. I don't think I've ever even shot an Emmett Roscoe.
Have I?
"What did I do to Emmett Roscoe?" I don't bother hiding my curiosity, but all I get in response is a grunt. At least he didn't snort.
"What didn't you do, you filthy little bastard. I'll give you this, you're a holy terror when you're roused."
I blink, not sure if I've heard him right.
"Are you sure you've got the right man?"
"The right festering bloody corpse, you mean? I don't know, let's have a look at my bloody scorecard! You don't breathe, check, your heart doesn't beat, check, you can move severed body parts by remote control in a way that personally repulses me, checkity fucking check, you eat brains, big fat tick in that box - what a shock! You are John Rigor Mortis Doe and I claim my five pounds!"
I nod. I'm trying to think my way out of this one, but nothing's coming. The chains are too strong for me to break, and with my wrist inexplicably healed up I can't work my hand off and set it going. I'm out of options.
He leans in, eyes locking. He's more than a little bit too intense for my liking.
"Let's start again from the beginning since you're acting like you never went to school. Point one - how would you feel, Sonny Jim, if I told you there'd been others like you? Other zombies?"
How would I feel? Shocked and curious. Wanting to know more. Off-balance - I woke up five minutes ago in the company of a skeleton and the Marquis de Sade's toolbox, and now I'm having a surreal conversation filled with rhetorical
questions with a man who has a chip on his shoulder the size of Stonehenge and more knowledge about me than anyone I know, including me. How would you feel?
"I don't know."
"There's a shock. Point two. How would you feel if I told you - again - that we'd been hunting them down for centuries?"
I didn't take it in when he said it before. He's making sure I get the message. He's got me.
The skeleton catches my eyes again. There's a fly struggling in one of the eye-socket webs, and I know how it feels. The spider crawls casually across the dome of the skull, taking its time, in no hurry... I wince, racking my brains. This must be what it's like to have a headache. I hear myself stumbling around in the dark.
"You said. You hunt... people like me. You bred that werewolf."
"Werewolves, plural." He chuckles again, almost a snigger this time. "We've got five pure-blood werewolves down in the cells. We had as many as fifty thoroughbreds back in the seventeenth century, but demand has fallen. There's just you now. The last remaining zombie as far as we're aware. Numero Uno on the endangered species list. Point being, right now your pasty rotting arse belongs to me."
He can read the expression on my face - the instinctive shock and fear, to know that there are five of them, and in the building - like five ticking bombs, or five deadly tarantulas, or five flesh-eating viruses in the air - five of those things just a cell door away, when even one would be enough to finish everything...
He reads my expression. I read his. It says I'm pond scum as far as he's concerned.
"I thought that might make you shit a brick. I'm pretty sure that's not the first time you've had a run-in with one of our little pets, although since you're a cunt as I mentioned earlier, you won't remember it. Still, that's probably why you left a brown trail all the way down Oxford Street. You knew Fido could kill you. You're ready to piss your knickers right now because you know, for a certainty, that there is one thing on this planet that can end your miserable attempt at a life, and we've got five of them waiting downstairs, waiting for us to cut you into meaty chunks and serve you up like Winalot - bloody settle down!"