by James Axler
“Sounded human.” Brigid confirmed what the others were thinking.
The wall to the building was solid brick, with just one slit window very high up, and it ended in a wooden fence that surrounded a yard or storage area of some kind. The fence was a little over six feet tall.
“No door,” Kane stated. He didn’t want to walk around and risk being seen. “We’ll use the fence.” With that, he trotted along to where the fence began and reached up to the top.
“You just plan to go in there?” Brigid asked, a note of warning in her voice.
“Some people would say that was reckless,” Kane said, “but those are the same people who get shot in the back ’cause they never checked what the noise was.”
Brigid nodded once, accepting his point. Then she watched as Kane lifted himself up and scrambled swiftly over the wall, all taut muscles and smooth movements. When he’d dropped down, disappearing behind the high fence, she turned back to Grant. “One of these days he’s going to be wrong,” she said. “Then he’ll get killed.”
“Not Kane,” Grant said. “He’s lucky, the kind of luck you hone into an instinct. That instinct has saved my ass on more than one occasion.”
“Yeah,” Brigid sighed resignedly. “Mine, too.”
* * *
A YARD LAY behind the building, a gate in the fence to Kane’s right, which he saw led to some kind of service alley. The two-story building was made of gray stone, discolored here and there where the elements had worked at it. There was a single window, and a wooden door that had been painted blue some time ago, long enough that the paint was scratched and flaking around the edges.
Above this were two more windows, looking into rooms on the second story.
Kane checked above him, but spotted no one at the windows. He glanced into the lower window—kitchen—then tried the handle of the door. Unlocked, the door opened with a creak of hinges that hadn’t been oiled in a long time.
Kane stepped into the kitchen and stopped. There was a dog bowl on the floor, licked clean. Beside it lay the rotting corpse of a dog, flies buzzing around it. It was a large breed, a German shepherd maybe, but it was hard to be sure because so much had decomposed.
Kane moved past the corpse, doing his best to ignore the stench, and continued through the kitchen doorway. It led directly into a living room, which contained two chairs big enough to hold two or three people each, and a sideboard housing trinkets of indeterminate value. Besides the peeling wallpaper, there was something else, too—a figure sitting in one of the chairs with its back to Kane.
“Hello?” he began as he stepped into the room. “I mean you no harm—”
Kane stopped as he saw the figure’s face. Its eyes were hollow and there were trails of thick black liquid running down its cheeks from those empty eyes. More liquid oozed from its nostrils and mouth.
Chapter 6
Kane blanched, stepping back from the man in the chair. He looked to be in his forties, though it was hard to tell. He was dead—that much was certain—and the liquid trails that ran over his face had dried there, congealing into something that looked sticky.
Kane flicked his gaze to the ceiling, searching for the source of the liquid—thinking it had maybe dripped from above. But no, there was nothing up there, just the paint, yellowed from tobacco.
The smell of the room struck him, an odor of meat turned bad.
Kane looked back at the dead man in the chair. He wore a dressing gown, beneath which were bedclothes, and thick socks on his feet. It was as though the man had got out of bed and sat down, and then died right then and there. Which meant he had probably felt sick, maybe even for a while. The drapes were closed, but they weren’t thick and so the sunlight still came in, turned a warm ochre color as it struck the material.
Belatedly, Kane pulled the rebreather mask from his jacket and slipped it over his mouth and nostrils. He had been breathing the air here for maybe a minute, long enough, possibly, to catch whatever it was that had killed the man. There was a lot of disease out there, and baseline radioactivity was still high in places, high enough that magistrates had been regularly dosed with immunity shots to combat its possible side effects if they had to leave the security of the ville.
Kane’s commtact snapped to life then, surprising him in the silence of the old house. “Kane? You okay? Found a way in yet?” Grant asked.
“I’m in,” he confirmed. “Found a dead body. Still searching.”
He trekked through the living room toward the far door, moving to the front of the house. He stopped momentarily at the window, inching back the edge of the drapes until he could see down the street. The SandCat was still there, silent, waiting.
Kane moved on to the entry, and a staircase lined with wooden banisters.
* * *
OUTSIDE, GRANT RELAYED Kane’s response to Brigid while she crouched at the edge of the wall, watching the street.
“Seems like we walked into deadville,” Grant finished, shaking his head grimly.
Brigid looked up at him for a moment, and her emerald eyes seemed to bore into his. “The trouble with deadville is that it used to be aliveville, which means we need to find out what happened here before it kills us, too.”
“Agreed.”
They returned to silence, watching the empty streets and the unmoving SandCat, waiting for Kane’s next report.
* * *
AS HE REACHED the top of the stairs, Kane heard the groan again, louder now that he was inside the building. There were three doors up here, plus a loft ladder hanging down from above.
Kane moved toward the closed door of the nearest room, resisting the urge to call his sin eater back into his hand. The weapon could be called instantaneously—he had to trust that, or he could end up spooking whoever was here if he went in with a blaster already in his hand.
The door gave after a gentle push. It was a bedroom, Kane saw, with a figure lying in the bed, propped up in a sitting position, pillows against the wall. It was a woman and, like the man downstairs, she was dead. Her face appeared to have caved in, and the eyes were just dark shadows now, that same dark liquid congealed in thick lines.
Kane closed the door, stepped out into the corridor. He couldn’t help the dead.
He moved to the next room, another closed door, tried it. The door opened a few inches, then stopped as it struck something. The groan came again, loud now, from just inside.
Kane pressed against the door and wedged his head into the gap, trying to look in. “Hey, is someone there?” he asked.
The room was in pitch darkness, the response another groan. Kane stood there, narrowing his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the lack of light. It was a bathroom, he saw after a moment: shower cubicle, sink, toilet stall. Someone was sitting crouched in the shower, arms wrapped around knees, head down so that their long hair fell in front of their face. Like the lights, the shower was off.
Kane reached for the xenon flashlight and switched on its beam, angling it away, at the floor behind him. “I’m turning on a light,” he explained. “It’s going to be bright. Close your eyes.”
He raised the flashlight, playing the beam through the gap in the door. It gleamed off the shiny surfaces of the glass and tiles and faucets, flashes of chrome as metal caught the light. The figure in the shower flinched just a little, snuffling like an animal but not moving.
“Hey,” Kane called. “You all right? You need help?”
The figure didn’t speak, just issued a pained howl from deep in its chest. It was dressed in soiled clothes, matted hair over its face.
Something was behind the door, stopping it from opening. Kane stepped back, pressed against the panel and shoved harder, forcing whatever was there to move back. The door moved a foot and a half, accompanied by a scraping noise, then there was a thud and it wouldn�
��t swing any wider. It was enough for him to pass through, and he went shoulder first.
Kane stepped into the bathroom, checked immediately behind the door. A figure was sprawled there, flat on its back, dead eyes open and turned black, the already-familiar trace of black liquid smeared across its face. The figure was naked, but it had wasted away so much that it was hard to tell if it was male or female; it looked like a skeleton protruding from a bag of skin. Kane glanced at the corpse’s groin: male, black smeared genitals and the floor beneath where something had leaked out. The assessment had taken two seconds.
Kane moved across the room, angling the xenon beam at the ceiling so as not to dazzle the groaning figure. It was still bright enough to light the space.
“You okay?” he asked again. “You hurt?”
The figure still did not respond, but just sat there, barely moving.
Kane padded forward, suddenly on high alert, his senses scanning for any danger, any attack. His eyes flicked to the toilet stall, couldn’t help but notice the mess that festered there. Black slime was spread up the sides of the basin, over the seat and across the back and the wall behind it. More black splattered the floor, as if someone had spilled paint there.
Kane turned back to the figure crouched in the shower, saw now that it was a woman, long dark hair obscuring her face, her frame wasting away like the corpses he had found in the house. He guessed she was young, a teenager maybe, but it was hard to tell—she was little more than skin and bones. “It’s okay,” he said gently. “I can help you.”
Kane crouched down before her. She didn’t move, didn’t respond, just issued another of those painful, agonized groans from somewhere behind her curtain of hair.
Kane reached forward, warning the woman what he was about to do, then pushed her hair back until he could see her face. Her head was tilted down, with black streaks running from her eyes and nose and mouth like a river that had burst its banks.
Kane resisted the urge to jump away.
* * *
“SOMEONE’S OUT THERE,” Brigid hissed. She was still at the building’s edge, watching the street, her back to Grant.
“What?” he asked, glancing behind him, back to where Kane had slipped over the fence.
“Dressed in black,” Brigid explained in a low voice. “It’s a mag...I think.”
She could see the figure in the distance, but only from behind. He was dressed in a long black coat that almost touched the ground, like the coats magistrates wore in storm conditions, along with a helmet covering his head. Brigid watched as he stopped at the driver’s side of the waiting SandCat. The gull-wing door whirred open and the figure ducked inside. A moment later, the engine roared to life.
“He’s moving,” Brigid whispered to Grant as he joined her at the corner of the building. “SandCat’s turning.”
Standing over Brigid, Grant poked his head around the corner, eyes focusing on the SandCat at the far end of the street. As she had stated, it had pulled away from the curb and was performing a three-point turn, reversing its direction. He was barely able to hear the engine from this far away; even in the silent ville the purr of the engine was lost to the wind.
“Lone mag,” he mused, “or maybe there’s a partner inside, operating the guns. What were they doing here, I wonder?”
Brigid glanced up at him. “Maybe gathering data by remote,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Grant stated. “We need to investigate while the coast is clear. Who knows how soon they’ll return.”
“Grant, no—that’s inviting trouble,” Brigid told him.
“Then what?” he asked. “It’s the only sign of life we’ve seen so far, which makes it our only lead.”
Brigid’s mind raced. “Satellite,” she said, thinking aloud. “Cerberus can track it.”
Grant watched the SandCat slowly pull away. Its rear fender was toward them now, which meant the driver wouldn’t spot them easily. “I don’t like it,” Grant said. “I’m going to go check where they’re going.” He stepped away from the wall. “You and Kane follow when you’re ready.” With that, he turned and began sprinting up the street, sticking close to the buildings, using their shadows and his own dark clothing to mask his movements.
Brigid muttered a curse about impulsive partners and their knack for getting into trouble, then activated her commtact.
“Cerberus, this is Brigid,” she said to the empty air.
Brewster Philboyd’s cheerful voice responded immediately. “Brigid, do you have an update for us?”
“Major update,” she replied, “but we’re still putting the pieces together. Can you get a spy-eye trained on a magistrate SandCat that’s just left our location?”
“A what?” Lakesh cut in over the shared comm frequency.
“Just put the eye on it,” Brigid said. “You can triangulate from my transponder, right?”
“On it,” Brewster confirmed.
The transponder device was surgically fitted for all Cerberus field personnel, designed to broadcast their location, as well as details on their health, such as heart rate and brain activity, to the home base in real time. Back in the Cerberus operations room, Lakesh and his team could access such details about Grant, Kane and Brigid even as they went about their mission, relayed over the satellite links and interpreted via a sophisticated computer program.
As Grant sprinted away down the street, Brigid followed at a more leisurely pace, checking the side doors and watching for snipers or other would-be threats. “Kane?” she said into her hidden commtact. “We’re splitting up. SandCat has departed. Grant’s checking out where it’s heading.”
* * *
KANE HEARD BRIGID’S words softly over his commtact, but he sensed it wasn’t the time to respond. He didn’t want to spook the girl in the shower.
“Tell me your name,” Kane said, holding his other hand out as he brushed the woman’s dark hair away from her face. The black tears glistened on her cheeks, pooling in the hollows beneath her sunken eyes.
The woman shook, clearly agitated as he met her gaze.
“I’m Kane,” he said, trying to reassure her. “I only want to help.”
The woman unleashed an agonized shriek, then suddenly moved, head tilting rapidly toward Kane’s face as if to butt him. He pulled back, but she grabbed him, both hands reaching for his face.
“Wh—?” he began, as the woman was dragged back with him, her face rushing at his.
Then she struck him, her nose against his, mouth pressed on his, lips parted.
Chapter 7
The woman crashed down on Kane, her face pressed against his. She was trying to kiss him.
With a little effort, he pushed her away. Though she was skeletal, she still had strength in her limbs, strength enough to cling to him as he tried to lift her.
“Get off me,” Kane snarled, shoving the woman aside.
He had seen this before, the sudden wave of adoration for a rescuer; in magistrate training they had called it shining knight syndrome. At least, that’s what he thought this was.
The corpselike woman lay there on the floor at the base of the open shower cubicle, not moving. Kane could see the floor of the shower now; it was smeared with black, congealed liquid, thick as oil. The blackness circled the drain in a spiral, like a child’s drawing of a firework.
Kane stood up, watching the woman as she lay there, perfectly still. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. You just...it’s just that you took me by surprise, is all.” As he spoke, he wiped at his face where she had struck him, her mouth on his in that desperate kiss. The rebreather was still in place, but it was smeared with liquid, and when he pulled his hand away, Kane saw the tacky black ooze glistening on his fingers.
“What is this stuff?” he muttered, studying it closely.
> On the bathroom floor, the woman watched through the strands of her hair, realized her mistake. A moment later she leaped away, moving with unbelievable speed, issuing a groaning scream from deep in her throat.
* * *
GRANT RAN, HUGGING the shadows, his eyes tracking the retreating SandCat, then flicking left and right to check for any sign of threat from the buildings to either side of him. They were almost silent, but he could hear low voices as he ran past them, mumbled pleas and agonized groans like the one Kane had gone to investigate.
Grant was two-thirds of the way down the street when something stepped from a shadowy alleyway between houses and stood in his path. The figure was tall and thin, head bowed so that its chin touched its throat. It was dressed in street clothes—not a magistrate. Grant’s eyes flicked ahead, watching the SandCat continue to roar away as he slowed his pace. Should he ignore the stranger, run past him? Or should he stop and interrogate him, see if he knew anything about the bones and the strained voices?
The figure opened its mouth as Grant approached, issuing a terrible groan, followed by something else: vomit, black as midnight, running from its mouth like tar.
Grant stopped, bringing himself up short before the vomiting man. “You okay, man?” he asked. “You need...something?”
The man doubled over, vomiting more forcefully, and a gush of black ooze spattered across the street between his feet. There was more ooze coming from his eyes, Grant saw now, and a dark trickle ran down from his left ear and both nostrils.
“What happened to you?” Grant asked, keeping a wary distance. “Did...did someone do this to you?”
* * *
BRIGID, MEANWHILE, PROCEEDED more slowly down the empty street, peering in the windows of buildings for signs of life. Three doors down she found what looked to be a meeting room or a saloon, shades drawn halfway down. She had to crouch to peer inside, and when she did she saw chairs arranged in a circle, with a dozen pairs of legs sitting in them. There were people in there, a ville meeting, maybe. Could that explain the sense of the place being abandoned?