“But we’re still here, right? And we can’t give up. It’s too important to bail out on. I mean, the whole world’s at stake here, Jackson—and I can remember how much you used to like high stakes. Well, we’re going all in. You wouldn’t want to be known as the man that, faced with the responsibility, folded at the last minute.”
“I know. I’ve known from the beginning all paths would lead here. You don’t fuck with fate.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind. Game faces on, yeah?”
RENNICK LOOKED LIKE the site of a natural disaster (which to a degree it had been, if brought about by unnatural means); in the aftermath of something like this, you’d expect to see a relief effort on TV reports combing the debris for survivors, local people pulling together to claw through rubble to find those trapped beneath. But there was nothing—a silence hung over the wrecked streets, where the rising water levels had disintegrated foundations and collapsed apartment blocks, and vehicles had been washed into the side of buildings where they hung, discarded. It hadn’t been a big town—one of those communities that had sprung up around a single industry; in this case some kind of textile factory, which sat to the east near the Chapperneam river, and was probably now a crumbling ruin once the banks had burst—and had been evidently quite poor, judging by how much of it had fallen apart. The cheap tenements and trailer parks hadn’t stood a chance, roofs torn off and exposing private belongings to the world. Bodies were everywhere, several feet deep in places, as if they’d been shovelled to the side like piles of dead leaves, and the stench was ripe: you could feel it gluing itself to your tongue.
Lox had to drive carefully, picking her way through the destruction, aware that at any moment the thoroughfares might become impassable. A squeal lanced through the stillness when she misjudged the space between two concrete blocks and the edge of one scraped along the wing; the noise disturbed more of those carrion-bird creatures perched nearby, who lazily flapped their large leathery wings and watched us pass. They didn’t make a sound in response; just all turned their black, turkey-like heads to study the car. Ahead, the Justice Department institution rose above the town’s peaks, the lane leading out to it terminated by a high wire fence. She brought the cruiser to a stop some distance away.
“Is that going to be guarded?” I asked.
“It’s likely. If it’s not, it’ll be alarmed.” She tapped her bottom lip with her forefinger as she ran her gaze over the facility. “Haven’t got time to go under it,” she said quietly as if she was talking to herself. “Gonna have to go over it.” She turned to the small onboard computer that jutted out from the dash between the driver’s and passenger’s seats and started tapping at the keyboard.
“What are you doing?”
“Something Hawkins mentioned. She said the greys and the rest of De’Ath’s damned followers were still using the Judgecloud. As far as the pusbags back at Grand Hall are concerned, this vehicle hasn’t been stolen. They’ve got no reason to suspect it.” She hit enter and looked up from the screen. “I’ve just included this sector in the nearest H-Wagon’s patrol circuit.”
“You’ve asked one to come here?”
She nodded. “They’ll get a flag notifying them that this is an area of interest. They’ll most definitely be able to pinpoint the unit that the hail came from. I’ve left it active.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I reckon they’ll be dropping by within the next hour.”
“And then?”
“And then, McGill, we’ll be hitching a lift.”
Lox deduced which was the nearest building tall enough for an H-Wagon to set down upon, and motioned for me to follow. We left the car and waded our way through the wreckage of what had once been the town’s main drag, the water around our shins. Looking down at myself as I picked a route through debris and smashed human remains, I realised how filthy I must be, my clothes sodden and grime-encrusted. I hadn’t had a shower or change of duds in three days, a small portion of Hawkins’ bike rations was the last thing I’d eaten, and the painkiller-induced sleep at Loxley’s place was the last time I’d closed my eyes in rest. With that in mind, I glanced at the hand that she’d strapped up, and prodded it: it was worryingly free of sensation. I’d been so distracted and hopped up on adrenaline that I’d given it scant regard, but now it felt as if it had calcified. The clean, sterile environment of a hospital where a doc could treat it seemed like a fantasy now—would there going to be anywhere that wasn’t permeated with the reek of death and decay? The air was probably already teeming with bacteria as all these cadavers broke down; infection surely wasn’t going to be far away. Plague, madness… the world was being reduced to a twelfth-century charnel pit.
I stuck close to Lox as she headed through the doors of an office complex and climbed the stairs, not risking the safety of the elevator. It was only four storeys, but structurally had survived the onslaught and was therefore the highest in the district; within its walls, however, it was a mess of abandonment as workers had fled in panic. Desks were strewn all over the place, crumpled documents scattered across the linoleum floor. One door stated the occupants were lawyers—pretty low-rent, judging by the décor—but it was in an equal state of disarray, records and files dropped and forgotten. The place was deserted, although a ratchety noise was enough to make me draw my gun in readiness; it turned out to be an electric fan sitting on a windowsill still plugged in and operating, cooling an empty room.
Lox reached the maintenance door that led out onto the roof and shoulder-charged it open. She indicated we crouch down behind some heating pipes, and wait. Sure enough, forty minutes later, the unmistakable sound of the craft’s descent advertised its arrival. We hunkered down lower as it circled the area, and I could hear her whispering to herself, willing it to land; finally, after an agonisingly long patrol of the neighbourhood, it hovered above the wide, flat stretch of asphalt that was the office block’s roof and extended its landing gear. It touched down but left its engine cycling as two greys disembarked from a ramp and lurched towards the edge of the building, peering over.
Lox tapped me on the arm and nodded. She jogged round the back of the H-Wagon and hoisted herself up on to one of the legs, climbing into the section where the gear folded back into the undercarriage. She reached down and gave me a hand up as I joined her. Despite the rumble of the lifters, we could hear one of the Judges talking into its comm as they both surveyed the ruins—in particular the cruiser parked below.
“A Jussstice Department patrol car hasss been left abandoned, ssstill broadcassting a sssignal… no sssign of the occupantsss.”
“Resssisstance?”
I instinctively glanced at Lox the moment the voice on the other end of the radio drifted across the roof. The strength of it was such that it was clearly audible over the background noise, and it had a different timbre to the greys’ dry, sibilant hiss; this had a note of authority, an inflection of power, behind it. My sphincter muscle puckered just at the sound of that one word, and the implied menace that was tangible in the speaker. I could see from the expression on Lox’s face that she felt the same way: that there was some unseen Big Bad far worse than we ever imagined.
“It’sss posssible,” the Judge replied. “They may have ambussshed the unit. It wasss logged asss being called to assisssst a ninety-nine red a few hoursss earlier, but that was further back up the interssstate. It hasss not reported back sssince then.”
“Sssinnersss evidently ssstill are at work in the ruinsss,” the disembodied voice intoned. It made my ears hurt to hear it. “Have you had any sssightingsss?”
“No visssual confirmation, sssir.”
“I had hoped the rainssss would flusssh out the guilty from their hidey-holesss, and yet sssome ssstill remain. They are assss tenacioussss assss vermin.” What sounded like wind whistling through the open doors of an ancient mausoleum emerged from the comm-device, and it took me a moment to realise that the speaker was sighing. “Complete a circuit of the pe
rimeter fence; tell me if you ssspot any criminalssss at large. Any resssissstance mussst be nullified. The living mussst be extinguissshed.”
“Very well, sssir.”
Both greys turned as one and stalked back to the H-Wagon, disappearing back up the boarding ramp. Seconds later the craft trembled, the lifters began to whine even louder, and it started to rise.
“Get ready!” Loxley shouted. “Pull yourself back in as far as you can go.” She spread-eagled herself like a starfish in the compartment that housed the landing gear just as they started to retract. I did the same, my nose a centimetre from the strut once it clunked into place.
“Have you done this before?” I yelled across to her, the wind now whipping across my face as I watched the roof drop away beneath me. Vertigo lurched in my stomach, and I couldn’t stop feeling the sensation that I was about to fall any second.
“Once or twice,” she admitted. “It gets easier with experience.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to be making a habit of this.”
“Just follow my lead. I’ll need you to jump when I tell you. If you hesitate, you’re dead.”
The H-Wagon banked, and the landscape below us lurched; I wanted to close my eyes and imagine I was somewhere else, but the nausea intensified the moment I shut them as I lost all centre of balance. I focused instead on a broken church spire below and tried to clear my mind of anything but that, ignoring the throb of the engine behind me, the stink of oil and exhaust, and the air sluicing past in the vents. Despite my efforts, my gaze kept wandering to the rest of the wrecked town and, at this remove, the scale of the destruction was sobering. I kept seeing little details—a scrawled SOS on a banner strung between two trees in some family’s backyard, pleading for help that never came; a flock of those vulture things feasting on the contents of an upturned car; a pylon that had crushed several static homes as it had come down on a trailer park—that personalised the tragedy, reinforced the number of innocent lives lost through the machinations of these maniacs. All those bodies that had once been loved and cherished husbands and wives, sons and daughters, reduced to nothing; a statistic. Unheard voices crying out, lost in the mass slaughter, raging at the injustice—you could imagine it seeping into the earth. The flesh might rot, the bones crumble, but the anger, the grief, would remain like an imprint, an indelible mark on this benighted land.
I saw the fence of the facility emerge from the corner of my viewpoint, and cast a glance at Lox. She nodded, as best she was able, and put her arm round the landing strut, shifting her position. The craft was doing a circuit of the perimeter, following the edge of the boundary; before us the main building was huge, and relatively untouched by the storm, its glass façade reflecting the wagon as it passed. It veered to the left and began a circle around the rear of the complex, from which many pipes and power outages sprouted. A fire escape ran between a pair of vast generators—Lox pointed, and pulled herself around so she was on the other side of the leg. I, trembling, did the same.
“Remember, go when I say so,” she said. “Miss the opportunity and you’ll splat against the side of building.”
The fire escape swung parallel to us frighteningly fast, and I didn’t have the time to steel myself before I heard Loxley shout and I leapt, the steel gantry rushing up to greet me. She landed on her feet and rolled, whereas I managed to collide with the handrail, rebounded and tumbled down half a dozen steps. A hand grabbed my shirt collar and stopped me going any further. The H-Wagon swept on, seemingly unaware two stowaways had disembarked mid-flight.
I groaned and held my side, what felt like a fire spreading across my chest.
“You okay?” Lox asked.
“Think... I bruised a rib at least,” I said when I had my breath back. “Aw, man, that’s sore.” I looked at her. “How’d you get so graceful?”
“It’s what I used to be paid for, back in the old days. There’s a reason a lumbering ox like you isn’t a professional cat burglar.”
“Point.”
“Come on,” she said, gripping my left hand and pulling me up. “You’ll manage the pain. That’s what you’re good at, right?”
“Has become a specialty, I’ll admit. Plenty of goddamn practice.”
She jogged down the stairs, me following more gingerly, every step sending an ache up my torso. She paused at one of the fire doors. “Try to open this from the outside and it’ll more than likely set off an alarm.”
“So how do we get in, then?”
“Oh, we still use it. We just disable the alarm first.” She vaulted over the side of the fire escape and landed beside a localised power station housed in a small shed-like construction fronted by a pair of metal doors festooned with warning signs. She dug in her inside jacket pocket and produced a small case, from which she extracted a screwdriver and rammed it between the doors, forcing them open. Once she had access, she got to work, her hands playing over the circuit switches. “I’ll probably trip something else too—lights or whatever—but hopefully we’ll be in before anyone realises.”
Moments later, she was back up the stairs. “I’ll need your help here.” She levered the screwdriver into the jamb, and indicated that I should yank the door back, which I did one-handed, bicep straining. I created enough of a gap for her to slide through, then once she was in she opened it from the inside.
We were in. Time to finish this.
CHAPTER TEN
There were Justice Department facilities like this all over the north state, although the CDR was one of the largest. I got to know about several civilian-staffed centres in the past through the Bushman’s gossipy enforcers—because they were largely populated by non-Judicial personnel, it was relatively easy to make contacts and find an inside man willing to smuggle merchandise out, or so I was reliably informed. Contraband storage depots were the most lucrative, though tech-development labs often paid out in hardware; when it came to securing new territories, the latest weaponry in your hand was a useful tool in a turf war. Whitecoats could have their heads turned by a flash of cold hard creds with little trouble, and were more than willing to pass on dope, guns and intel for an extra bounce on the side. Government-funded set-ups like this notoriously didn’t pay for shit, and their disgruntled workforce were ripe for exploitation.
Stender, as he’d been keen to point out on several occasions, wasn’t HoJ, and clearly most of the researchers working here hadn’t been either, up to the point of De’Ath’s coup. Whether they’d refused to comply with the new regime, or were simply in the way, their bodies littered the corridors. It looked like most had simply been disposed of where they stood, though there was a variance in the state of the corpses: some had been shot—a trio sat with their backs to the wall, a triple explosion of crimson on the plaster behind them, suggesting they’d been lined up and executed—while others were bags of bones, rotted skeletons that had seemingly melted in their clothes. Jellified skulls grinned at me from behind desks, sunk back into shirt collars. I was at a loss as to what could’ve happened to them; doused in some chemical agent, possibly. Whatever the cause, it meant the place was rank with the smell of decay, the sterile antiseptic scent of a facility like this replaced by a grimy stench, like the air of a sealed tomb.
“You think anyone’s been left alive?” Lox whispered, eyeing the remains.
“Past experience says no.”
She nodded and popped her head around glass-partitioned offices, noting the carnage everywhere she looked. “Nothing useful here. Where should we head for?”
“This seems to be some kind of admin section. Let’s check the floor-list at the next set of elevators.”
Just as we reached the end of the corridor, Lox pulled me back. “Wait a second,” she said. She cast a glance around the corner. “CCTV camera on the wall by the els. Hold on.” She delved back into her jacket pocket and produced a slim device the size and shape of a credit card, which she held up and pressed the centre of. A red light blinked on its end; satisfied, she stuffed it away. “O
kay, let’s go.”
“What was that?”
“Localised EMP pulse. It’ll knock it out of action.”
The guide on the wall stated that viral labs were a couple of storeys below us. She shook her head when I made towards the elevators, and instead took my arm and directed me towards the stairs, which we nimbly descended, the stairwell dark and silent apart from our footsteps tapping on the concrete. The building felt unnervingly dead while at the same time it was impossible to dispel the sensation that something very still and patient lurked in the shadows, waiting. I thought I could hear breathing coming from close by, but I realised that it was my own. I kept looking over my shoulder, convinced that multiple figures were following. The place was getting under my skin. Fatigue may have been playing a factor, but I couldn’t shake the notion that it was because we were in the presence of an entity of an entirely different stripe to what we had encountered up to now. Between the walls, something presided over the chill emptiness, infecting the entire structure.
We reached a pair of double doors stencilled with biohazard signs that by the look of them were ordinarily only accessed by a keypad but had been forced open, a blackened scorch mark emanating from the lock. Loxley reached out and traced its outline with her fingers, brow furrowed. I unaccountably felt nervous watching her do that, and touched her arm; she pulled her hand away and straightened.
“You feel that?” I asked.
“What?”
“I don’t know… I keep feeling there’s something here. You not getting the bad vibes? There’s like a toxic atmosphere.”
“Been sensing bad vibes since you first turned up at my door, Jackson.”
“No, this is different. There’s a power here. I can’t explain it.” I lightly pushed open one of the doors. “Promise you’ll stick close to me. I don’t like what we’re heading into.”
The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus Page 10