And now it’s all white and I’m tiny. And Mum is here. How cool is that? With her Ray-Bans and a camera swinging round her neck. Lifting me out of my crib and holding me up to blow a raspberry on my belly.
Is that my oldest memory?
So this is death, I guess.
67 FAMILY REUNION
Charlie was tied and gagged in the trunk of Vern’s Jeep as the wooden house exploded.
Harry, why the hell did you stab Man Bun? What were you going to achieve with half a dozen armed thugs in the room? … And now I’m alone for the rest of my life. Which might not be long …
Rosie and Vern’s place got blasted too, as the Jeep hit the highway. Tools and junk rattled, and Charlie was face down, wrists bound so tight her fingers were numb. Feeling every bump as they sped along the highway.
It took twenty-five minutes to reach Las Vegas’s outer suburbs. Charlie’s shoulder joint crunched when a superhero yanked her arm, scraping skin off her legs as he dragged her over a bare concrete floor and slammed her in the back of a battered delivery truck. Ed was pulled out of Harry’s Porsche, tied and gagged. Patrick came last, barely conscious, with blood oozing from a split lip.
Man Bun and another guy got in the front, while a huge female superhero sat on a bench in the rear compartment and put the sole of her boot in Charlie’s face. She’d walked through Vern’s cow shed and seemed amused as the stench made Charlie retch.
The sun was coming up as the second leg of Charlie’s ride ended. Man Bun opened the rear doors, with an emergency wound kit strapped tight round his bloody leg. He slashed the cords on Charlie’s wrists and ankles, and dragged her out. She recognised the tall pearl-coloured towers and rusted monorail track overhead as part of UrbanScape.
The trendy four-thousand-room hotel and casino had had the misfortune to open right before the first SNor outbreak and had gone bust in less than two years.
Man Bun limped to an anonymous grey door and tapped an entry card. Patrick was starting to come round, and Charlie reached across to cuddle him.
‘We’ll be OK,’ she mouthed softly.
Ed stayed silent. His expression was difficult to read, but was possibly guilty for not obeying the order to get down into the shelter. Charlie was worried he might have a fit, which was the last thing she wanted with a psycho like Man Bun on the scene.
‘I want my mom back,’ Patrick whimpered as Charlie followed Man Bun up bare concrete stairs.
At the top, Man Bun tapped his pass again and they entered UrbanScape’s deserted main floor. Charlie’s bare feet were cold on the marble in a grand check-in area, full of giant chrome sculptures and lifeless video screens.
The air-conditioning hadn’t run in years, leaving hot, dead air. Man Bun knew his way, expertly navigating the vast casino. Passing roulette wheels and endless banks of slot machines, lit only with emergency lighting and chinks of daylight.
Charlie was trembling and on the edge of tears, holding Patrick tight as she marched barefoot through a strip of restaurants. Most of UrbanScape’s eateries had never opened and the big photo of Harry’s aunt and hoardings for Kirsten Channing at UrbanScape coming soon! pushed Charlie into open sobs.
Patrick patted her arm, while the superhero dug her in the back.
‘Quit your snivelling and move, or I’ll give you something worth crying about.’
They reached a grand elevator lobby, unlit, its huge curved-glass aquarium filled with a couple of inches of dark green sludge. All but one elevator had a not-in-service sign and Man Bun made an elaborate sweep with his arm.
‘Ladies first,’ he crooned.
Charlie had never felt such pure hatred for anyone as the marbled elevator accelerated towards the fiftieth floor. Her shoulder hurt where she’d been yanked out of the Jeep and Patrick whined as she put him down.
‘You got cow shit on them big boots?’ Man Bun asked, eying the superhero filling half the elevator. ‘You’d better not trail that on Fawn Janssen’s carpet …’
Charlie shuddered. She knew Man Bun worked for the Janssens and that Fawn was now the boss. But, somehow, her brain hadn’t processed this truth until she heard her sister’s name.
The superhero stayed behind, unlacing her size-fourteen boots, and Man Bun led Charlie, Patrick and Ed down a brightly lit hallway, with carpet so thick it almost gobbled their feet. Two guards with slate-grey suits and Tec-9 compact machine guns stood either side of triple-height black doors.
Man Bun got told to wait outside as one suit opened the door and let Charlie, Ed and Patrick in.
Ed gawped when he entered a lair worthy of a James Bond villain.
The office was on UrbanScape’s top floor, with glass curving around three sides and a view along the switched-off signs and unwashed windows of The Strip’s shuttered mega-resorts. Inside were several black leather sofas, a large art-deco-style bar and ten feet of mahogany desk. The only items on the desk were a telephone, one of JJ’s football helmets and a large model of the Janssen corporate jet.
‘The boys must sit on the sofa,’ a short but well-muscled butler told the suited guard. ‘The girl is to kneel in front of the desk facing forwards with her hands on her head. If she makes the slightest movement, give her a zap with your tasers. Miss Janssen is eating breakfast in her suite and will be here shortly.’
• • •
Fawn made them wait an hour.
‘Long time no see,’ Charlie’s big sister said as she strode into the office, wearing yoga pants and Nikes, twirling a three-foot cattle prod like a cheerleader’s baton.
Fawn was tall and dark, while Charlie was average height and blonde. But there were striking similarities in the sisters’ large blue eyes and broad shoulders.
‘Don’t look at me, Charlie,’ Fawn said sharply. ‘Unless you want to get zapped.’
Fawn paused by the sofa and glowered at Ed.
‘Baby bro’s quite handsome for a mongo,’ she said, as she stepped close behind Charlie, tapping the high-voltage prod in her palm.
‘What did I ever do to you, Fawn?’ Charlie asked, trying not to satisfy her big sister with a sob.
Fawn spoke in baby talk. ‘Is ickle Charlie sore because her silly boyfriend got turned to crackling?’
Man Bun entered the room quietly, dressed in clean pants. He lined up with the two guards at the back of the room as Fawn touched the cattle-prod tip against the back of Charlie’s neck.
‘Is this switched on?’ Fawn asked, pressing the trigger. Charlie yelped, shot forward and banged her head on the desk. ‘Well, I guess it is.’
Man Bun laughed appreciatively in the background.
Charlie rolled on to her back and glowered defiantly.
Patrick squealed, ‘Stop hurting her,’ as Fawn swung the prod over Charlie’s face.
‘How ’bout a zap on the nose, sis?’ Fawn asked, then took a deep breath and smiled. ‘You did ask an interesting question back there. Why must I torment poor little Charlie? Before you were born, I used to trap spiders and mice. I’d pull off their wings, or legs, or put pins in them. But when you came along it seemed way more fun torturing you.’
‘You’re a psychopath,’ Charlie hissed.
‘Say it once, say it loud, I’m a psycho and I’m proud,’ Fawn sang cheerily. ‘And look where it’s got me! I was born trailer trash and now I’m the richest woman in Vegas.’
Fawn let this linger as she continued menacing Charlie with the cattle prod.
‘The question is, what to do with my lovely sibling?’ Fawn continued airily. ‘Good lab workers are tough to find and there’s always plenty of work. So I think I’ll set you up here at UrbanScape. I’ve got four thousand empty hotel rooms to choose from. You can work fourteen hours a day. I’ll give you every third Sunday afternoon off, if you behave. You seem fond of your little godson, so we’ll keep him close and make sure he suffers if you don’t.’
Fawn adored the torment on Charlie’s face and gave her a zap on the thigh for good measure.
�
��Then there’s young Ed,’ Fawn said as Charlie balled up, convulsing from the electric shock. ‘I generally think it’s better if cripples and morons are disposed of. But my lab techs often need a test subject for trying new mods. Someone has to be the guinea pig and it might as well be him.’
‘I’ll never work in your labs,’ Charlie growled. ‘I don’t care how you try to force me.’
‘That’s what your old friend Mango said,’ Fawn noted. ‘But we part-drowned one of her kiddies, gave her a few behavioural mods and now she’s practically employee of the month.’
As Fawn said this, a white disc rolled across the floor towards the guards.
‘I dropped my Icebreaker,’ Ed said, jumping off the sofa to chase the mint.
‘And who gave you permission to eat?’ Fawn demanded as one of the suited guards stepped forward and shoved Ed towards the couch.
‘Back,’ he ordered firmly.
But Ed stubbornly insisted on picking up the mint and got into a little tussle with the guard.
Charlie was fearful. ‘Ed, sit back on the couch, or they’ll hurt you.’
‘Christ he’s so dumb,’ Fawn said as Ed got pushed on to the sofa. ‘Since you’re so fond of Ed, I might have a taxidermist stuff him and put him on display in your lab. Though he could be a bit of a mutant after we’ve twiddled with his DNA …’
Fawn tipped up her head, laughing helplessly at her own joke.
Then the back half of her office exploded.
68 UNSEEN POTENTIAL
Harry’s dead. Charlie’s on the floor. Fawn is talking about doing nasty things to me. I’m seventeen. Everyone says I’m a big boy now. If I don’t do something, they’ll take me to a place a hundred times worse than Care4Kids.
Ed feared things crawling up his leg, so he’d woken up in a long-sleeved undershirt and jogging bottoms tucked into long soccer socks. His pockets bulged, but Man Bun’s team hadn’t bothered to search him.
This meant the guards didn’t find the Icebreakers, one of which Ed had flicked across the floor as a distraction, or the pair of Charlie’s homemade grenades he’d stuffed down his right-hand pocket as the bad guys stormed in the back at the house.
When the suited guard tried to stop Ed picking up the mint, Ed had slipped one of the little grenades in the guard’s jacket pocket. The guard had just re-joined Man Bun and his colleague at the rear of the office when he noticed the lump in his pocket.
But by then it was too late …
‘What the—’ Fawn yelled, shielding her face as the blast threw her across her own desk.
Charlie had been knocked flat so the blast didn’t hit her so hard, and she jumped up and ripped the cattle prod out of Fawn’s grasp as an alarm sounded and sprinklers fired. The two slate-suited guards had been ripped apart by the grenade blast. Man Bun had been flung backwards, smashing through the glass panes of a bookcase, and splattered with chunks of his former colleagues.
Ed knew the blast was coming and dived on top of Patrick to shield him. The sprinklers filled the air with fine droplets, snuffing an alcohol fire that had erupted around the bar. Everyone’s ears were ringing, but Fawn reached over her water-sprinkled desktop and grabbed a pistol out of the top drawer.
Charlie ducked as Fawn took two wild shots, then scrambled round the side of the desk and speared Fawn with the cattle prod.
‘See how you like it,’ Charlie gasped, blasting the cattle prod as Fawn collapsed.
At the back of the room, Man Bun was finding his feet and going for a pistol tucked in the front of his trousers.
‘Charlie, behind you,’ Ed shouted.
As Fawn felt around for a weapon, Charlie landed hard on her sister’s chest and pushed the tubular cattle prod sideways against her sister’s throat. Man Bun was limping and dazed. He had a gun, but Fawn and Charlie were obscured by the desk.
Ed threw Patrick behind the sofa, then picked up a dainty marble-topped end table and ran through the smoke towards Man Bun. Man Bun swung to shoot as Ed came into his peripheral vision, but the wounded leg made him clumsy and the circle of marble smashed him in the face.
Charlie got a spit shower as Fawn gave up trying to reach the gun and used both hands to fight the bar crushing her throat. On the other side of the desk, Ed and Man Bun hit the floor and Man Bun shot wildly into a side wall.
Fawn finally choked out, freeing Charlie to grab her sister’s pistol and bob above the desk. Ed sat on Man Bun’s bloodied leg, but Man Bun was winning the battle to turn his pistol towards Ed.
‘This is for Harry,’ Charlie snarled, rounding the desk and shooting Man Bun through the eye from point blank range.
Ed staggered back, splattered in gore. Charlie’s giant T-shirt was soaked through, ripped at the neck and hanging off one shoulder. Her arms and face were bloody, but there was no hesitation as she went back behind the desk and fired two shots. One in Fawn’s heart and one through the temple.
Charlie leaned on the desk, coughing from dust and gun smoke. A thousand emotions and no time to deal with them. She’d been running over the debris barefoot, but now she felt the cuts in her bloodied soles.
‘Go call the elevator,’ Charlie told Ed, as she snatched a little Tec-9 machine gun. ‘Be careful, the butler and the superhero might be around somewhere.’
She looked at Fawn’s Nikes. They were too big, but there was a ton of broken glass around the doorway, so she yanked them off and pulled them painfully over her bloodied feet.
‘Elevator’s here,’ Ed shouted through the huge doors. ‘I’m holding it.’
The carpet squelched as Charlie scooped a rigid Patrick off the floor behind the leather couch.
‘Little guy,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Someone’s coming, hurry up!’ Ed shouted.
Fawn’s Nikes were way too big and Charlie almost turned her ankle as she walked over shattered barware and blackened books. Ed stood in the elevator door and Charlie’s wet sole skidded as she sprinted in, starting to do the splits.
There were footsteps getting close. Ed frantically pressed the door-close button and someone shouted, ‘Hey!’ as they started down. The fifty-floor ride took a thousand hours as Charlie imagined the power getting cut.
‘My ears won’t stop ringing,’ Ed shouted, the floors blipping past.
37, 36, 34, 32, 28 …
‘It’ll get better,’ Charlie said as Patrick gripped her tight. ‘Try to stay calm, Ed. You were the hero. You saved all our lives.’
Charlie kept the Tec-9 poised as the elevator reached casino level. When the doors opened, there was no phalanx of guards ready to shoot them down, just acres of dead casino and green emergency lighting.
‘How do we get out of here?’ Charlie asked, mostly to herself.
A few steps out of the elevator lobby were arrows pointing towards The Strip. Charlie was struggling with her bloodied feet, so Ed gave Patrick a piggyback, and they jogged past rows of unplugged slot machines.
After a couple of hundred yards, Charlie led the way over a fallen banner advertising UrbanScape’s Grand Finale, All Retail 50% off. An alarm sounded as she pushed the bar on an emergency door, stepping out into a bright Vegas morning.
The wind was still strong and it caught Charlie’s sodden T-shirt, making her shiver. UrbanScape’s cobbled frontage had once been a mix of water spouts, cafés and trendy bars. But everything was shuttered now and there were several dozen homeless people in tents and shelters. GENUINE HOMELESS HERE. NO ZOMBIES, was spray-painted on UrbanScape’s pearl-coloured glass.
The locals weren’t sure what the girl dripping bloody water and holding a machine gun was doing, but they were understandably wary and someone shouted, ‘Get out of here, freaks.’
‘Come on, keep calm,’ Charlie told Ed, spotting a glazed expression that sometimes signalled an imminent fit.
‘We’re just passing through,’ Charlie told the onlookers loudly, stretching her T-shirt down over her ass as the wind rattled litter and made cardboard shelters
wobble.
I’ve got no virus mask, no money, no phone and you can see my nipples through this shirt, Charlie thought. No taxi will take us anywhere in this state and my feet are agony.
I should have grabbed Man Bun’s wallet, but I’m not going back for it. The only place I can go is my office at the coffee shop. I don’t have my key, but Gwen should be unlocking about now. But it’s four miles away and we need to get off the street because Fawn owns the cops.
Owned the cops …
Charlie and Ed had reached The Strip. They’d hobbled about thirty yards when she noticed a concrete ramp. It still had a sign saying it was the valet entrance to a boutique hotel, but concrete slabs had been put down to block traffic.
There was a bunch of creepy-looking guys standing around, and teenaged zombie girls sat on concrete behind, wearing very little. It didn’t take a genius to figure that the zombie girls were being pimped for sex.
Charlie was still pumped from killing Fawn and thought how satisfying it would be to open up the machine gun and wipe the pimps out. But her disgust was replaced by a sniff of opportunity as a silver Toyota turned off the strip.
‘That’s our ride,’ Charlie told a confused Ed. ‘Stay close.’
Charlie thought the pimps might have guns, but doubted they’d risk using them to protect a client. As the Toyota’s window came down and one of the pimps slid off the wall to talk business, Charlie barged between them and stuck her Tec-9 in the face of the middle-aged driver wearing a fancy purple virus mask.
‘Already killed two people this morning,’ Charlie roared. ‘Gimme your car or I’ll make it three.’
Charlie’s machine gun and blood-spattered appearance gave the man no cause for doubt.
‘Faster, pervert,’ Charlie ordered as the guy popped his seatbelt and opened the door. ‘Keys, keys.’
A couple of the pimps were getting too close for comfort, so Charlie sprayed a burst of shots into the air.
‘Stay back.’
One bullet shattered a sheet of golden glass several storeys up. Passers-by screamed as shards pelted the sidewalk and the driver was in such a panic that he fell out of the car, clutching his chest. The car was keyless, so he reached up to hand Charlie a plastic fob. As Ed threw Patrick in the back, Charlie jumped in the driver’s seat and put the transmission in reverse. A motorbike swerved and honked as she backed on to the strip.
KILLER T Page 33