Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  Instinct took over. Ogiwara dropped to the ground, ducking down behind the cannon. He inched forward, hands parting the snow to reveal a tiny crawl space underneath the ancient military weapon, a wet patch of mud between the wheels that had been encased in lumps of concrete. Snow all around made a natural igloo, and he squeezed in against the underside of the gun as the sound of crunching bones came from a short distance away.

  Not the same one.

  The bear had come running from a different direction, meaning there was more than one.

  A low growl sounded from right above him. The tiny crawl space went suddenly dark, and Ogiwara clamped a hand over his mouth to stop himself crying out. Something huge and shaggy walked across in front of the cannon. For a moment Ogiwara was certain it had seen him and would turn back, then the air lightened as it moved on.

  For a long time, Ogiwara didn’t dare to breathe. He lay still, listening to the silence, waiting for the creature to return.

  Finally, the numbness that was starting to creep into his legs from where they were pressed against the snow forced him to move. He shifted forwards a few inches, bent into a crawl and peered up out of his hiding place.

  The huge beast’s passage was obvious from the wide gash in the otherwise pristine snow. It had carried straight on, heading across the buried road and into another car park, then climbed up an embankment and disappeared through the snow-covered tennis courts at the back of the Grand Mansion.

  Ogiwara didn’t wait. He leapt up and stumbled through the snow towards the Fort. All that remained of Mishima was a bloody mess of chewed up muscle and bone, but Ogiwara barely looked at it as he pushed though the gap Mishima had made in the door and then pulled it shut behind him.

  Breathing hard, he sat down on the floor, his hands and legs shaking. He rubbed his eyes, determined not to be a pussy and cry. He’d not cried since his dad had taken the belt to him for the first time when he was five years old and he had no intention of crying now. Mishima might be dead, but he was still alive, and he was safely inside the most secure part of the whole complex, with thick walls and a fortified door behind him.

  And a dying guy taped to a tabletop.

  O-Remo groaned and turned his head, his eyes briefly fluttering open and then closing again.

  Ogiwara understood now. He had thought Mishima was still trying to open the door, but his friend had already taken the dying guy inside and had come back out looking for him.

  ‘You stupid bastard,’ he muttered, wiping a bit of grit from his eye. ‘You should have saved yourself.’

  O-Remo groaned again. His eyes opened and his mouth worked slowly. ‘Karin?’ he gasped.

  ‘Do I look like a chick?’ Ogiwara said. ‘I mean, do I?’

  ‘Karin…’

  ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Karin?’

  Ogiwara leaned his head back against the cool stone of the wall and closed his eyes.

  Bee, watching through the windows of the gym, nodded slowly as the bear took down the helicopter and then began trying to knock over the bus. He felt a momentary concern that it would turn its assault on the van containing the treasure trove of expensive equipment he had spent the past decade accumulating, then the schoolboy appeared from nowhere and blasted it in the face with a distress flare. Bee raised an eyebrow at the boy’s nerve, but it was a futile gesture. Soon the complex would be overrun and only his plans would be able to prevent the deaths of all of them.

  He turned away from the window. In the middle of the room, Kaede was tied to a chair placed exactly over the centre line of an indoor soccer court. Precision was key. It was precision that would win out in the end.

  He had stripped her naked and painted her from head to toe in stripes of white and red. He smiled. She looked like a tablecloth he had seen for sale in a one hundred yen shop just last week. Tasteless, cheap.

  A wet tea towel was wrapped around her mouth. For a long time she had tried to argue with him, offering him every sexual favour under the sun to the point where he’d almost said yes just to shut her up. He hadn’t fed or watered her, and didn’t intend to. If he kept her weak she wouldn’t struggle.

  It was how it had to be. He had dreamed of this, and now everything was falling into place.

  The girl’s eyes followed him as he walked. She didn’t look so much afraid as angry. She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose as if trying to communicate without words.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ he told her. ‘Soon we will find out if you little life has any worth at all. Are you looking forward to that?’

  She made a muffled sound that could have been a swear word. Bee just smiled.

  Akane screamed. She clutched Karin to her as they watched the events in the courtyard below. She felt a momentary sense of pride as Jun ran out and set the flare off in the bear’s face, then relief as Jun and Ken made it to the pub with Rutherford Forbes in tow. Then her relief turned back to terror as the huge bear, its fur burning, reeled in the snow, rolled over on its back like a dog at play, then leapt up and bounded towards the main entrance to the Grand Mansion.

  She felt the thud as it crashed into the main doors. The air filled with a huge roar, and then everything went silent.

  Akane let go of Karin. The two women looked at each other, neither wanting to speak. Karin pointed a finger at the floor. Akane gave a little shrug.

  The stairs to the lower floor were right behind them. Designed like a ballroom staircase, two sets of stairs on either side of a wide landing arced downwards, joined in the middle and then doubled back to slant down to the floor below.

  It was easily wide enough for the bear to come up, Akane knew. That it hadn’t was what worried her.

  ‘What is it doing?’ she whispered into Karin’s ear.

  Karin just shook her head. Akane remembered the way the bear had rose up out of the snow from where it had been hiding and then ambushed Dai. Did it know they were up here? Could it smell them? Was it waiting for them to come down?’

  She had seen it burning. Was it possible it was dead? Wouldn’t it have made a lot more noise if it was in its death throes?

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered, but Karin had already taken a few tentative steps towards the stairs.

  ‘I can smell it,’ she said. ‘I think it’s dead.’

  Facing them from the wall above the staircase was a huge framed painting. Karin went over to the top of the stairs and stared at the reflection in the glass. After a moment she nodded and started down. Akane, not wanting to be left behind, hurried after her.

  Karin reached the turn of the stairs and squatted down, peering through the banisters at the reception area below. As Akane squatted down beside her, Karin pointed.

  ‘It’s dead,’ she said. ‘Look.’

  The bear lay in front of the fireplace, as large as a dead mammoth. Fire licked at its face, at the hollows where its eyes had been. Most of its head had been seared free of hair, and the fire had spread to the carpet, chewing hungrily at the thick pile as it make its way towards the stairs.

  ‘All this lacquerware,’ Karin muttered. ‘This place could go up in minutes. She started to stand up and turn away, but Akane took hold of her arm and pulled her back down. She pointed. ‘Look!’ she said, feeling her heart pushing up into her throat. ‘Can you se it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There. Poking out of its head. Wires.’

  #

  ‘Any chance that you could tell us what the fuck you were planning to do?’ Ken said, shoving Forbes back towards the bar. ‘You were supposed to be getting us out of here, then we end up getting attacked by that thing and you try to do a runner, leaving us behind. Just what the fuck is going on here?’

  Forbes lifted a hand to protest, but Ken slammed a fist into the older man’s jaw. Forbes moaned and crumpled to the floor. As he tried to get up, Ken aimed a kick at his face, but Jun pulled the guitarist back. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Listen to what he has to say.’

&nb
sp; Ken scowled, but nodded. He pulled Forbes up and pushed him back against the bar, holding him by the front of the shirt. ‘Talk, damn you, and make sure I can understand it.’

  Forbes’s face was a mess of blood and bruises, but his eyes were desperate and hopeless. ‘We made them,’ he whispered.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘They’re cybernetic.’

  Ken let go and Forbes fell to the floor again. Jun helped him up as Ken slammed a fist down on the bar top.

  ‘They’re part animal, part machine. Genetically engineered. British Heights sits on top of a research laboratory.’ Forbes started to laugh. ‘We’re all going to die, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I was slowly coming to that conclusion.’

  ‘What are they for?’ Jun asked.

  Forbes laughed again. ‘For sale,’ he said. ‘They were built on a commission.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For a rather secretive government. One that has a particularly sensitive border, and is keen to prevent asylum seekers getting out of the country. To save on the long-term costs of policing their mostly forested border with military personnel, they decided to create a visible deterrent. A legend and an aberration at the same time. It just so happened that my company’s genetic engineering work in other fields attracted their attention. They submitted a proposal for a product, and like any good company, we designed a prototype and put it into testing.’

  ‘The bears,’ Ken said, shaking his head. ‘What have you done here?’

  ‘They weren’t supposed to get out.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Prototypes? Just six.’

  ‘Just six?’ Ken slapped a hand against his forehead. ‘You mean there are six of those things out there?’

  ‘Forbes nodded. ‘Somewhere, yes.’

  ‘And we’re trapped up here.’

  Forbes nodded. ‘For the time being, yes.’

  34

  Jun gets chased

  ‘We have to get to Karin and Akane,’ Ken said. ‘Then we have to get to the Fort, as per the original plan. Those boys should be there by now.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Jun said, standing up. ‘Look after him.’

  Ken glowered. ‘I know how I’d like to look after him, but I’ll be good. Be careful, Jun.’

  Forbes pointed. ‘Go behind the bar and down through the hatch to the drinks cellar. There’s a route through to the dining hall kitchens. It’s where we store food in January and February.’

  ‘How many more secret routes are there?’ Ken said.

  ‘A few. Bring Karin back safely and I’ll help you.’

  Jun didn’t see that Forbes was in any position to make bargains, but Karin was with Akane, so it served his purpose. He went back through the bar, and sure enough, found a trapdoor in the floor which led down into a cold, brick-walled storage room. Another door at the back led into a dark passage lit with a single dim emergency light. At the end, a wooden ladder led up to another trapdoor.

  He found himself in a utility room full of washing machines and cleaning equipment. A door led through into the kitchen washrooms, and from there Jun found himself back in the dining hall. First he went to the windows and peered out at the courtyard, looking for the bear, but there was no sign of it. When he went through the entrance doors into the main corridor of the Grand Mansion he felt a warm draft coming from the reception area.

  The whole entrance hallway was a burning inferno.

  Akane and Karin had come in here to look for Forbes. Jun began to shout for them, but his voice was quickly lost over the roar of the fire. With one eye on the flames that were beginning to lick at the ceiling, he crept as close as he could, trying to see if they were in the reception area.

  ‘Oh, wow.’

  The burning ruin of the bear he had hit with the distress flare lay in front of the reception desk, fierce flames striping the hide off its metal-clad back. While he could see a metal exoskeleton, he smelt burning flesh too. Whatever kind of hybrid robot monster this was, he had killed it.

  He heard a hiss from above him and a sprinkler system came on, but it was weak, its pipes partly frozen up, perhaps. As an icy spray soaked him, Jun leapt backwards, turning back towards the dining hall. There was another staircase there heading to the upper floor, but as he started towards it the glass doors to the east covered walkway exploded as another of the bears came raging through.

  It swung its massive head towards him, its jaws opening into a vicious snarl. Jun clamped hands over his ears as it let out a deafening roar, then it bounded forward, huge shoulders knocking ornamental tables aside, pulling pictures and light fittings off the wall.

  There was a door to his left. Jun grabbed the handle and jerked it, knowing if it was locked he was dead.

  It opened on to a classroom decked out with tall British hardwood tables and high-backed chairs. Jun leapt at the nearest shadowy space as he heard the door snap off its hinges behind him. The warm, pungent scent of rotting flesh made him gag, and he glanced back to see the creature trying to squeeze through the gap, its jaws snapping at his legs.

  The doorframe began to break away from the wall. Jun scrabbled backwards, looking for a way out, and spotted a second door leading back out into the corridor on the other side of a wide teaching blackboard. He jumped up and skirted around towards it, the bear stretching towards him. One huge paw broke through the wall and swung for him. A few more seconds and the creature would burst into the room.

  He had to time his exit right. Too soon and it would pull back out into the corridor and run him down. Too late and it would snatch him where he stood.

  ‘Come on!’ he screamed at it with tears in his eyes, from the smoke and the overwhelming fear that had wrapped around him like a suffocating plastic sack. ‘Come on!’

  It roared one more time, and its other front leg broke through.

  Jun bolted for the second door, praying it was open. For a moment his heart seemed to fill his throat as the door handle slipped through his fingers, then he leaned his weight on it and felt it turn beneath him, stiff from disuse. He pulled it open and swung around it, just as a huge paw broke through the middle of the wood.

  Jun bolted through the smoke down the corridor towards the dining hall. He heard the creature roar behind him and felt the reverberations in the walls. He didn’t dare look back.

  Just before the door to the dining hall, a small staircase rose up to the second floor. Jun raced up it, not looking back. Only when he reached the top did he dare pause long enough to catch his breath.

  The upper floor was filled with smoke. Jun put a sleeve over his mouth, but it didn’t make much difference. Instead, he began opening doors and looking into rooms for any sign of Akane and Karin.

  Jun knew Ogiwara had ransacked the bedrooms, but he was more interested in open windows or another sign that Karin and Akane had tried to escape. They’d said they were planning to search the Grand Mansion first, but they might have been quicker than he expected. They could already be in the staff quarters, safe for now at least.

  He opened the door to the King’s Bedroom and looked back out at the corridor. The smoke was thickening, and flames were licking at the banisters of the main staircase. There was no sign of the bear, so Jun ran to the windows, pulling one wide. He leaned out, gasping in a lungful of deliciously clean air.

  ‘Where are you?’ he shouted, gripping the window frames in anger.

  ‘Jun!’ came a voice from above him, startling him so much he almost tumbled out. He looked up to see Akane and Karin peering down at him. A moment later something huge and red billowed down towards him, making him jump back. It was one of the curtains he had taken down to cover Akane on their first night. It had been torn in half, the ends tied to make a crude rope.

  ‘Grab it! We’ll pull you up!’

  ‘How did you get up there?’

  ‘Just grab it!’

  A deep growl sounded from the stairway behind him. Jun turned to see a h
uge, hairy shape climbing up the centre of the burning stairway. As flames danced across its coat, the bear seemed oblivious to its predicament, its eyes fixed only on its prey.

  ‘Grab it!’

  Jun wrapped his arms around the curtain-rope and leapt out of the window as the bear charged. For a moment he was airborne, swinging out over the steps of the entrance below, then he slammed into the wall beside the window. As the bear’s head appeared beside him, he felt himself rising up. Its paw smashed into stone where his feet had been a moment before.

  Akane and Karin hauled him up and over a low stone balustrade on to the roof. He stared at them openmouthed, but they both seemed unharmed.

  ‘Run!’ Akane shouted, as the bear’s claws scrabbled at the edge of the balustrade.

  Running wasn’t easy through the thick snow, but Jun struggled along at the rear as Karin took the lead ahead of Akane. They headed east towards the far end of the building, where Jun saw a small room sticking up like a rooftop observatory.

  Karin didn’t even pause. As she reached it, she lifted a lump of stone Jun hadn’t noticed her carrying and slammed it against the window. The stone actually bounced back, but Karin retrieved it and tried again. Akane came up behind her and Jun saw she was also carrying a lump of rock. It had white paint on one side as if they’d broken away pieces of the balustrade.

  ‘Come on, Jun!’ Akane shouted. She tossed something at him: a broken piece of roof tile.

  Taking it in turns to slam their objects against the glass, Jun barely had time to notice what was inside as cracks slowly began to appear. With one last grunt of exertion, Karin slammed her rock against it and a small hole appeared. A few seconds of furious attack later and they had made a gap large enough to climb through. Why this odd little room would have bulletproof glass, Jun couldn’t say, but as he climbed in behind Karin and Akane he marvelled at what appeared to be a miniature apartment, cut off from the rest of the complex, complete with kitchen unit, dining table and chairs, and a set of stairs leading down, he presumed, to a bedroom. Perhaps this was Forbes’s secret retreat, he began to wonder, just as Akane tugged on his arm.