Watching the flickering orange thread on the horizon as the city burned, I was struck by the fact that this could mean change for me, too; that I wasn’t necessarily beholden to the debts of the past. My history, my obligations, could equally be put to the torch. I was on a new path, directed towards a different fate by tonight’s events. I didn’t have to be the same Jackson McGill; I didn’t need to conform to what was previously expected of me, or what I expected of myself. I could step up.
I glanced back at the slumped figure at the table—this stranger into whose path I’d stumbled through my own dumb luck and ineptitude—and the vials that lay scattered around him. I felt some kind of key was being offered here, one I had no choice but to accept. What was the alternative, when it came down to it—to sit here and wait to die? To try to flee amongst all that mania, when they were closing off every way out? I didn’t want to be caught and exterminated like vermin.
I moved from the window and nudged Stender awake. He snuffled and opened bleary eyes, groaning as he rubbed his temple.
“Christ, what rotgut did you serve me?” he mumbled, pulling himself upright in his chair.
“It’s the antifreeze that gives it its kick,” I said. “Listen, we need to get moving. I’m not sticking around until they come for us. If the world’s going to shit, then nowhere’s going to be safe.”
He sobered up pretty quick. “What are you thinking?”
“The thing you said was heading up Tek Division…”
“Mortis.”
“Yeah. It was in charge of this Red Mosquito project—you said it had the rest of toxin. Enough to do serious damage?”
“Oh my God, yes. Just what I got here”—he motioned towards the packs—“would be enough to eradicate an entire species. It’s got a vault-load—they’ve probably manufactured more since the prototype tests.”
“Does it work?”
“I’ve seen a lab full of dead bovines that says so.”
“Another three cheers for science. Makes you proud.”
“That’s when I got out,” Stender snapped. “When I saw its applications, I got the hell out of there.” He grimaced. “Can I grab some water? I don’t feel too good.”
“Be my guest.” I nodded to the sink, and watched as he stumbled to his feet and crossed to the taps with his tumbler, washing it out before filling it and taking a swig. He stifled a belch, and filled the glass again, though this time he paused before it reached his lips. He held it out in front of him, then quickly crossed to the light switch and snapped it on. I squinted at the sudden brightness.
“I thought you said no lights—” I started.
“Look at this.” Stender wafted the glass under my nose.
“What?”
“Look.”
I peered closer. At first, I saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the cloudy murk that passes for tap water around here (it’s never been what you could call inviting; that’s why I’ve sworn off the stuff and drink my poison neat), but something caught my attention: a tiny white flicker that was gone almost instantly. A moment later, I glimpsed it again, twisting with the swirl of the liquid and its own motion.
“There’s something in the water,” I said, shaking the tumbler and watching the motes eddy. I saw one curl and flex. “Jesus Christ, what is that? Is something alive in there…?”
Stender didn’t reply, simply spun and bent over the sink, sticking two fingers down his throat without hesitation. He retched, then vomited copiously, spinning the tap with his left hand to wash the bile away. I stepped back from the reek of sour alcohol. He coughed and spat, taking deep raspy breaths, arms hunched on the draining board, face still hovering over the sink.
“You got any bottled water?” he said finally without turning round.
“Fuck no.”
He sighed, and his head dropped lower in resignation. “You got anything that isn’t forty-eight per cent proof?”
“There’s some juice in the fridge. Might be on the turn.”
He pushed himself away and yanked open the refrigerator door, retrieving then taking a gulp from the OJ carton. He replaced it and wiped his mouth.
“You okay?” I asked, realising I was still holding the glass of contaminated water. “What’s in this?”
“Micro-organisms. They’ve already got into the water supply.”
“Like a virus?”
“I don’t know.” He took the glass from me, gazed at its contents. “Could be a parasite. Either way, they’ll have gone for the most efficient mortality rate, one that could wipe out vast swathes of the population. Multiple organ failure, lung damage, that kind of thing. Maybe even something that attacks the nervous system.”
“Something that would send the people mad?” I asked, thinking of the crazies that I’d seen running rampant in the streets earlier that evening.
“A variation on a neurodegenerative, sure. If you want to murder the population, why not get them to do half the work for you?”
“Christ, man, are you going to be all right?”
“Guess we’ll have to see. Hopefully, I didn’t consume enough. But don’t touch the water from now on unless you know the source.” He tipped the tumbler down the plughole.
“Consider me warned.”
“You said about getting out of here.”
“I’ve been thinking… I gotta friend—Loxley. We should talk to her about what we can do to stop this Red Mosquito.”
“You’d help me?”
“Right now I don’t see there’s any other choice.”
“I don’t think you’ve told me your name.”
“Jackson McGill.” I stuck out my hand, which he shook firmly.
Fate sealed, path taken—far as I was concerned, there was no turning back now.
CHAPTER FOUR
WE DEPARTED THE house at speed. I left the front door hanging open, unconcerned as to who might use it as a home now. I wasn’t coming back, and there was nothing of any worth anyway, no keepsakes that had any sentimental value. I barely gave it a backwards glance: I had no emotional ties, it belonged to an old life.
A searchlight swept up the road and caught us in its beam before we could climb into the car—an H-Wagon was banking overhead. Both of us paused and stupidly watched it circling, arms shielding our eyes from the glare, transfixed for a moment. When I realised it was getting lower, I had the gumption to get moving, and indicated Stender should do the same. The backwash of the craft’s engines as it descended was blowing the dirt in my front yard in a circular dance.
“They coming for you?” I shouted over the roar of the wagon’s thrusters as I pulled the driver’s door shut and cranked the engine.
“Could be they’ve tracked me already,” he replied, peering anxiously through the windshield. “Might just be a coincidence.”
A bolt lanced out of the sky and carved a gouge in the earth a foot or so away from the Pontiac’s hood. We both jumped. I put my foot down on the accelerator and twisted the wheel, the tyres spinning on the grass and mud, and shot away, the back-end fishtailing wildly. I fought to keep it under control as it screeched onto tarmac.
“Figure that’s not a coincidence,” I said, looking in my mirror. Bright light painted the road behind in sharp monochrome. The wagon was somewhere above us. “I reckon they’ve been keeping tabs on you ever since you went AWOL. Wouldn’t be surprised if those two jays we encountered were on their way to pick you up. Just your good fortune you happened upon me first.”
“Yeah, I’m still counting my blessings about that one.”
“Funny man.” I slalomed past some abandoned vehicles, their occupants long since departed. “I bet a little light GBH seems pretty fucking preferable now. Hold on.” I threw the car round a hairpin bend, barely easing up on the gas. Stender gripped his seatbelt nervously. We were passing through woodland now, thickly clumped conifers on either side. “They still with us?”
“Think so. Looks like they’ve gone higher. Too much foliage around here for them
to stay too tight on our tail. Are we heading away from the city?”
“Yeah. Loxley’s out in the sticks. I don’t wanna lead these goons to her, though. We gotta lose them somehow.”
We hit a clearing, the ground flattening out and the tree canopy becoming sparser, and almost instantly another laser blast seared through the night air and impaled the trunk, the Pontiac shuddering from the impact. I wrestled with the wheel, the undercarriage now scraping along the road. The car was careering into the bushes at the edges, and I stomped on the brake, swearing loudly, trying to arrest its spin.
“Oh Christ,” Stender murmured, glancing round. I followed his gaze in the mirror and saw flames licking the paintwork around the rear window. Beyond it, the car had been demolished, nothing more than a crumpled knot of glowing metal. It squealed against the tarmac.
“Spark could send the whole fuel tank up,” I said. “Car’s a write-off. We’ll have to bail.”
I let the Pontiac slide off the road, and it tumbled onto its side as it hit a ditch and rolled, a second before a third beam fired from the H-Wagon lit up the dark and ignited the brush where the vehicle had been moments before. The car travelled several feet on its roof, then came to rest against a tree trunk. I was already unbuckling and kicking open the shattered windscreen before it had even come fully to rest, and gave Stender a hand to free himself from his seat. We flopped backwards off the hood and scrambled deeper into the woods, putting as much distance between us and the burning vehicle as possible. We stopped to catch our breath in the undergrowth, hearing minutes later a soft wumph as the Pontiac finally went up in flames.
We sat back against a moss-covered log and didn’t speak, simply listening to the distant crackling of the flames and breathing in the stink of burning gasoline. I realised that’s all I could hear: it was nearing dawn but there was no birdsong, and nothing fluttered amongst the leaves. It was as cold and quiet as a mausoleum.
“No birds,” I remarked, my voice sounding strangely dislocated.
Stender glanced up. “Mass migration. They’ve seen the way the wind is blowing.”
“Abandoning us to our own extinction, huh?”
“You can’t blame them for not sticking around. It’s a natural instinct to fly from species annihilation.”
I let a hollow laugh escape. “Then what are we doing?” My immediate reaction should’ve been to run as far away as I could once all this kicked off, to hole up somewhere remote and wait for the end of the world to pass me by. Instead, here I was sprinting towards it, actively trying to do something about stopping it—or at least lessening its effects. This was most definitely a new path for me.
“Guess you can’t fly if you’ve got nowhere to fly to,” he answered.
There was a moment’s pause, then I said: “Talking of flying, can you hear anything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“The H-Wagon. Has it skipped out?”
Stender frowned, cocked his head to one side. “No, can’t hear it. Maybe they think we’re dead.”
“Thing was, I didn’t get the impression that they were trying to take us out. They had every chance to blow the hell out of the car, and instead they went for shots that incapacitated. I think they were trying to disable us, with a view to capture. Most specifically, you.”
“I’d imagine they want me dead as much as everyone else.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” I turned to look at him. “Me, they don’t give a shit about—I’m collateral damage. But you—I’m starting to think perhaps they still need you. The packs you took, I figure they got plenty of their own—you said yourself they could manufacture Red Mosquito in multiple quantities by now—so they wouldn’t be after those. It’s you they want. Your services are still required.”
“But I was just one of many who worked on it—”
“And maybe they’ve got all the others back at HQ, and you’re the last one they need. Or maybe all the others are dead, and you’re their final chance.”
“Final chance?”
“Perhaps they can’t get it to work.”
“But I saw the test results. The thing was lethal, and extremely efficient—”
“I don’t know, I’m not a boffin. Could be they can’t get it to work on the scale they’d hoped for—fine for lab specimens, but a failure when it comes to spreading among the animal population. They want you to go back to your research and fix it.” I shook my head. “This is all guesswork. I have no fuckin’ clue as to their motivations. But if they want you alive, it’s a fair bet it’s because they need you for something.”
“I would never—”
“As far as they’re concerned, you don’t have a choice, pal. They could probably pull what they need straight out of your head, like those creepy-assed psi-pigs Justice Department wheels out when they want to question someone.” People I’d known who’d experienced the interrogation cubes at their local sector house had spoken of having their minds read by psychic cops. It wasn’t, by all accounts, a pleasant sensation to endure. It sounded to me like the creepiest shit imaginable, to have someone leafing through your brain, seeking out your guilty secrets. “This Mortis creep—you said he wasn’t human.”
Stender was quiet for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “He was a normal man once, I think. But he’s changing… physically. His skin, his bones… He’s becoming something else. Something not living.”
“Like those maggoty fucks I put a bullet in earlier?”
“Yeah. What you’ve got to understand is that I think there’s a greater power at play here. An entity is responsible for the new CJ, Mortis and the rest, making them what they are. A… a higher level of intelligence.”
“Are we talking God… or the devil? This does feel kind of biblical. An end-of-days vibe.”
“Neither. More like alien. A being from outside our perception, our universe, is directing them, intent on wiping out all life. Its foot-soldiers are doing the dirty work on its behalf.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. “Can we really stop it? I mean, do we have any kind of chance?”
“I don’t know. It’s doubtful. It feels so powerful, so… remorseless.”
Something rustled amongst the bracken. Both of us froze, glanced at each other, then slowly eased ourselves to our feet. I peered into the green but could see no sign of life. Stender started to whisper a question, but I shushed him quiet, held up a hand, and took a step forward, trying to look past the low-lying branches. The dry leaves crackled again as if a small creature was snuffling through the roots. I reeled through all the likely possibilities in my head—rodent, wild pig, deer—and kept waiting for it to pop its head up above the scrub, but it stayed out of sight, the tremor of a bush several metres ahead the only indication that there was anything there.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. The events of the last twelve hours had me jumping at shadows. I had run countless times through these woods in my fitter days and would’ve normally paid no attention to whatever wildlife was crashing about in the undergrowth; plenty of adders and rabbits had slithered and leapt into my path. At any other time, the area would be teeming with fauna. But the pervasive silence had unnerved me, and now every twitch of every blade of grass raised my hackles. I retreated to where Stender was standing.
He looked at me enquiringly. “We should go,” I mouthed.
“What is it?” he murmured.
I shook my head and pointed in the direction we ought to edge away to. He frowned.
“Could be nothing,” I said as quietly as I could. “But I don’t want to take the chance.” I sounded paranoid. I had to admit, the panicky jitters were beginning to make themselves known, and I wondered if some kind of delayed shock was settling in. I would start seeing monsters everywhere. Just because you don’t know what’s out there doesn’t mean—
The thing came leaping out of the foliage like a trapdoor spider striking. I didn’t have time to register what it was before I felt its weight collide with me and knock me onto
my ass. I smelt it first: a putrid cocktail of rotting flesh and disease that seared my nostrils. Then my eyes focused as it pinned me to the soft mossy earth: it was a dog’s body, ostensibly, though all fur had long been shorn away and what was left was pale, puckered skin through which veins and bone were visible. Its paws weren’t those of a canine, however; it had talons—wicked hooked claws that right now were biting through my jacket and pressing into the meat of my shoulder. Needle-sharp pain travelled down my arms and chest, and I could feel the blood beading at the puncture points.
It was the head that I couldn’t stop staring at, however—affixed to the dog’s torso was what appeared to be a child’s skull, snapping and growling. But the eye-sockets were empty, coal-black pits in which nothing stirred, and the bone was boiled clean of hair and fat. The skull had no muscles, no tendons, controlling it, and yet it freely swivelled on its neck, teeth champing as it lunged forward and tried to tear a chunk out of my cheek. I had both hands under its chin—ensuring I couldn’t reach around for my gun—and it was taking all my strength just to keep it up and away from biting off the tip of my nose. It snarled and wrestled, its body shifting in my grip, and any initial squeamishness about handling such a grave-born thing was soon put aside as I struggled to fend it off. For all its half-decayed state, there was power in its assault, and it renewed each attack with hungry, angry venom.
The reek of it got into my throat, and I struggled not to retch. I tried quickly releasing my right hand and punching the side of its head, but it just glanced off the naked skull, the thing barely seeming to notice. Its teeth chattered, opening and clamping shut, attempting to catch my fingers between them, issuing forth a hideous bark as each time it was denied a meal. Its talon-paws scrabbled on my jacket, the material sliced open, my chest now stinging and raw.
“Little help?” I shouted, twisting my head round to see where Stender was. He’d seemingly disappeared. I yelled his name, fuelled mostly out of fear. This thing was like something that had been pulled from the depths of childhood nightmares, and hysteria was starting to inform my attempts to keep it at bay. This wasn’t right, this couldn’t be right, echoed a voice in my head. This can’t be real, this can’t be real. However, the pain, and the weight and physicality of the creature attacking me disabused that notion. This was no hallucination, no matter how much I willed it to be.
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