Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  ‘They’re not here,’ she said as she reached the vehicle and stepped over the police tape to look inside. ‘There’s a lot of blood, but no bodies.’

  Jun saw more circles of police tape in among the trees. He hoped Akane wasn’t too optimistic. The distances from the upturned vehicle told him a story—that some of the students had survived the crash and tried to get away as the bears broke out. The secondary avalanche must have buried the cave entrance again, explaining why the rescuers had seemingly not discovered it. Only now, as the snow was beginning to settle, was it revealing itself again.

  ‘Jun, the road.’

  It disappeared into a slew of fallen rocks and snow, sawn off, but from where they stood they could see the rest of it, covered in tire tracks from the rescue workers, meandering off into the trees. All they had to do was follow it back to civilization. The rescue workers had perhaps finished for the day, but even if they had to trudge several miles, being on a road would spur them on. Jun nodded and started heading for it.

  ‘No!’

  He stopped and turned back. ‘What?’

  Akane hurried over to him. ‘We can’t, Jun. This isn’t finished yet.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  She shook her head, eyes wide in earnest. ‘We can’t leave the others. It could take hours to get back to the town. We know what those things are, and we can figure out how to stop them.’

  ‘Akane, that’s crazy! They’ll kill us one by one!’

  ‘No, Jun! We can’t just leave!’

  He looked back towards the cave entrance, just as the snow shifted and settled, slumping down to block the entrance. While they could probably dig their way back in, there was no telling how long it would be before another mini avalanche came crashing down. The road was their best choice now.

  ‘Come on, Jun!’

  He turned to see her climbing up the steep hedgerow beside the road, following a slightly wider line through the trees. He ran after her, planning to drag her back down and pull her with him if necessary, but she was already twenty metres away, climbing hard up through the snow.

  As he reached the point where she had started up, he saw a little wooden sign poking up in the snow, covered with a faded map. He peered at it for a moment, noticing a house that represented British Heights in the middle of a tangle of forest nature trails.

  Her footfalls had uncovered a set of steps. He started up after her, but now she had found the trail she was far ahead, marching as quickly as she could through the deep snow, back towards British Heights.

  Jun took one last lingering look back towards the road that offered safety and salvation, then he groaned inwardly and hurried after her.

  40

  Swords and snowplows

  Karin, exhausted from the climb up the spiraling metal staircase in the dark, slammed her shoulder against the wooden door until it cracked. With a scream of frustration, she slammed against it one more time, and the lock finally gave way, sending her sprawling across a darkened room as the door burst open.

  She looked up, letting her eyes adjust, listening for the sounds of pursuit from below. For the first few turns in the endlessly spiraling staircase she had heard the clang and crunch of the bears’ feet on the rungs below, with the screeching of the one Forbes called Professor Crow creating a spine-tinging musical backdrop.

  Then everything had gone silent.

  She was in a hanger of some kind, a couple of snow-clearing vehicles standing in the dark beside her. The air was chilly and dry, as if the garage door had recently been opened. She got to her feet and stumbled across the room towards a shadowy cubbyhole in one corner. As she had suspected, she found a set of stairs leading up to the upper floor.

  She emerged at the end of a corridor in the Fort. She’d spent a little time there over the last few months, mostly as a way of getting out of Rutherford’s way. The Fort, with its long corridors and comfortable relaxation areas fitted with coffee machines and sofas, was a great place to sit with a book. There were often students wandering about, but a lot of the time she’d had one of the relaxation areas to herself. With its high, vaulted ceilings and tall windows looking out onto the forest, it was a comforting place where she could collect her thoughts, and analyse in her mind her reasons for being here.

  Now, cold and silent, it seemed like a malevolent place filled with dread.

  She crept down the corridor, unsure where she was going, and through a heavy wooden door at the end. She found herself in the main hall, a hexagonal space with stairs leading up to the upper floor and a concierge’s desk in one corner for when there were parties of schoolchildren staying.

  As she started up the stairs, she paused halfway where the stairs turned back on themselves, and reached up for an ornamental sword fitted across a metal shield on the wall. It was bolted into the stone, but when she jerked it the fitting came lose and it broke away. She hefted it in her hand, and touched the blade with her finger. It was as blunt as a fire poker but it was better than nothing. Just having it in her hand gave her comfort.

  Upstairs was mostly classrooms and conference rooms. She looked into a few, but they were empty and deserted. From the windows she could see no sign of any of the bears, but the sun was starting to dip behind the distant hills and it would be only an hour or two before darkness fell. The heating was off, and unlike the tunnels below the complex, none of the lights worked. There would be nowhere safe from the bears after dark.

  She carried on along the top floor, looking into rooms as she went. She wasn’t sure what she would find, but they had planned to meet here. Perhaps Ken, O-Remo, and the two boys were here somewhere, hiding out. She wanted to call for them, but she didn’t dare.

  It was on the bottom floor, outside one of the last doors that she tried, that she felt a sudden shivery chill pass through her. Her hand paused on the handle, and for a moment she thought about just walking away, perhaps finding a closet or a cubbyhole somewhere to crawl into and wait until either rescue workers arrived or the bears chewed through the entire building to get to her.

  Don’t go in, a tiny voice whispered. Karin ignored it. She jerked the handle and stepped inside.

  The sword clattered to the floor as a hand came up to cover her mouth. O-Remo lay on the bed, a blanket covering him up to his chest, his face cold and white.

  Someone had closed his eyes. Karin reached out to touch his cheek. There was the tiniest residue of warmth beneath a creeping cold.

  He’s dead because of you, the voice whispered again. He loved you. You pushed him away, rejected him, because of your selfishness. He was never perfect, but his heart was pure, innocent. You’re nothing but a golddigging whore. He never deserved you, and you never deserved him.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, squatting down beside the bed. ‘What can I say? I did love you, Remo. I … always did.’

  She rested her forehead against his chest, taking a lost comfort in him. When they had been together he had often held her in his arms while her career crashed and burned around her. He had taken his band to the greatest heights and seen them fade into the rearview mirror of his own career, but even when they were touring bars and live houses and playing to no more than fifty people at a time, he had always taken a pleasure out of what he did. The enjoyment was always there. He hadn’t been celebrity hungry like she had; for a while the world had just hunted him. He had waved goodbye and moved on; she had forever been looking back.

  And in that divergence they had lost each other.

  The walls around her shuddered. Karin lifted her head, wondering if one of the bears had got into the Fort. From somewhere outside came the growl of an engine, and she stood up, wondering if rescue workers had arrived. She gave O-Remo one last smile, ran a finger down his cheek and then went out to find out what was going on, the old sword once more in her hand. As she pushed through the door into the corridor, something huge smashed into the main doors.

  She could hear the sound of an engine
, but it was trying to break inside. Was this some new kind of bear they hadn’t seen before? She backed away, heading for the stairs to the upper floor, taking them two at a time.

  Upstairs on the landing, she chose a door that was directly above the crunching, splintering cacophony below. She found herself in a classroom with a large bay window that looked out over the complex.

  She ran to the window and pulled it open, letting in a cold afternoon wind. She shivered, pulling her jacket tighter around herself, and looked out.

  Rutherford Forbes sat at the controls of a huge snowplow directly below her. With a twisted smile on his bruised face, he was trying to batter through the doors.

  ‘Rutherford!’ she shouted. ‘Stop!’

  If he heard her he showed no sign. He reversed a few feet, and then slammed forward into the door again. This time it gave way beneath the heavy snow shovel, but the whole plow bucked forwards, its front end punching into the Fort, the small cab smashing into the wall.

  Forbes screamed as the glass shattered and the roof of the cab buckled and broke open. He tried to jerk the plow back into reverse, but its blade had got stuck on the inside wall of the Fort. ‘Come on, you bastard!’ he screamed over the groan of the engine and the whistling of the wind.

  ‘Rutherford!’ she shouted again, this time lifting the sword up by her shoulder like a javelin. The blade wasn’t sharp but the point would do its business on his soft, fatty flesh. She looked down at him, thought about all the things he’d done, all the deaths he’d caused, and tensed her arm, ready to harpoon him like a diseased fish.

  As the plow jerked, he glanced up at her. For a moment his eyes went wide, then he gasped in surprise. ‘Karin! Karin, what are you doing?’

  ‘You bastard, Rutherford. What did you do? Those things … all those people dead…’

  ‘It was just business, Karin! Jesus, you should know about that! Every time you put those wonderful lips of yours around some guy’s dick it was the same thing!’

  ‘I never hurt anyone!’

  ‘Nor did I! The things weren’t supposed to escape!’

  Her fingers tensed over the sword handle. ‘But they did! I should kill you, Rutherford!’

  ‘Karin, don’t be so stupid! Can’t you see, you need me. You’re nothing without me. Don’t think I didn’t know what you were up to. I knew from that first night that all you wanted was a way into my bank account. I played you just the way you tried to play me. I used you for whatever I wanted, and damn, I don’t regret a minute of it. You were as good as in any one of those movies.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Oh, truth hurts, does it? The fact is, you bailed on that piece of trash singer because he wasn’t any good for your career. He was some worthless lowlife who was only bringing you down. You jumped into my bed at the first opportunity because you wanted another shot and you needed someone to pay for it. Well, much as I think you’re a disgusting little tramp, I’ll do it. Put down that sword, Karin, and I’ll do it. I’ll marry you, and you can have all the money you want to put into your silly little media career. Just put that sword down.’

  Karin shook her head, tears filling her eyes. ‘He was worth ten of you, Rutherford,’ she said slowly. ‘He loved me, and he loved what he did. And he never … meant anyone else any harm.’

  She flung the sword as hard as she could, worried momentarily that it would be a total anticlimax and bounce off the cab of the snowplow, but the sword fell straight and true, finding the bull’s eye at the back of Forbes’s throat, impaling him like a knife-eater whose trick had gone wrong. He gurgled and blood pooled around the sword hilt protruding from his mouth, then he toppled out of the cab of the plow and landed in the snow.

  For a moment Karin felt hollow, overcome with the guilt of murdering her fiancé, then the memories of everything she had seen overwhelmed her. She stepped away from the window, slid down to the floor, held her face in her hands and began to cry. She stayed that way for a long time, letting out not just the pain of now, but everything from her past, from the sweet loves she had lost to the shameless way she had got into her manager’s bed and then lain on her back with a succession of strangers.

  When she was done, she pushed herself to her feet, steeled herself, and headed for the door. It wasn’t over yet. There were still lives to be saved.

  41

  Dying sonatas

  Unloading a Marshall Twin Head Stack in two feet of snow and without any help took Ken some time. Eventually he got it down onto the ground around the side of the van, facing the burning Grand Mansion. He connected it to a small generator which they used for occasional impromptu outdoor shows at the front of train stations or at campsites. Often the sight of a formerly arena-filling band busking outside of a train station would attract bigger crowds than they saw in many live houses, and they always sold a stack of CDs. Ken didn’t dwell on how far they’d come down in the world, because right now he would be happy to play to an empty room if only he had his band around him. With two of them gone and the other missing, the only thing left was for him to play them one last lament.

  His favorite guitar was in the room in the dormitory building, but he had several others. He selected a fine Gibson Flying V, the guitar he had used at the Metal Garden concert that O-Remo had remembered so fondly. It was only appropriate.

  The flames biting at the windows on the upper floor of the Grand Mansion were his audience as he slung the strap over his shoulders and set the guitar to his favorite tuning, a sludgy dropped C which would rattle windows and shake bones. He thought about the best song to play, settling on the track that they often closed their shows with, Consecrate my Heart in Blood, a song that had reached the Top 20 of the Oricon Charts and brought them mainstream recognition, something they’d sneered about for years while spending the money the song had earned on beers, women, and computer games. It was a doom metal love song, an ode from a suicidal man to his dead wife. Apt, in so many ways.

  As Ken started to strum out the first chords, he only wished he could sing, but he had the voice of a tone-deaf choirboy, so an instrumental would have to suffice.

  ‘This is for you, guys,’ he whispered, as the introduction came to an end and he stamped down on his overdrive pedal.

  A sludgy roar filled the courtyard, the sound of his brutal, down-tuned chords echoing off the walls of the Grand Mansion. Ken gritted his teeth as he felt the music surge through him, filling in the cracks in his broken soul. His left hand worked the fretboard like a man wrestling with a snake, while the right attacked the strings with a ferocity he hadn’t felt since the first club tours when all four of them were teenagers. In his last desperation, he sounded better than ever.

  He looked up as an answering roar came from across the courtyard. A bear stepped into view between the end of the west wing and the first of the dormitory buildings. It bared its teeth and bounded forward.

  This is it, Ken thought. This is the end. This is where I play my last song.

  He closed his eyes, waiting for the beast to finish him, his fingers still working hard at the strings, letting the music flood through him.

  Come on, he thought. Where are you?

  He opened his eyes. The bear was standing in the middle of the courtyard, no more than ten metres from him, shaking its head from side to side, its eyes flicking back and forth as if lost. He’d seen fans like that in some of the club shows, veterans of the hardcore scene, their minds fried from the relentless brutality of the music, yet still enjoying it on a deeper, subconscious level.

  The bear was rocking out.

  Ken grimaced and attacked the guitar harder, segueing into one of their most brutal songs, Eternal Laceration, and the bear gave a short growl and sat back on its haunches. Ken couldn’t be sure, but smoke appeared to be drifting out of one of its ears.

  It’s short-circuiting, he thought. It’s breaking down.

  He continued to hammer at the guitar. The bear climbed unsteadily back to its feet and stumbled away, repeate
dly missing its footing and slipping to the ground, still shaking its head from side to side. Only when it made it to the break in the buildings from which it had come did it start into a slow run, disappearing around the back of the Grand Mansion.

  Ken turned down his volume control and stopped playing, the silence immediately rushing in to fill the void where the sound had been. For a few moments it had looked like the bear would break down entirely, before it had taken control of its senses long enough to get away.

  ‘It couldn’t handle the frequency of the sound waves,’ he muttered, giving a stunned shake of his head. ‘God damn it, we can break them!’

  He looked down at the guitar in his hands, and remembered how the bear had managed to get away.

  But the guitar isn’t enough. I need more bass.

  Akane’s pace was killing Jun. He never seemed to be able to get within twenty metres of her, almost as if she thought he would try to turn her around. He had resigned himself to following her whim, however, whether it killed them eventually or not. Plus, the light was fading. A sign they had passed a few minutes before had given the distance to British Heights as one kilometre. He didn’t know how far they had come, but he didn’t like their chances of negotiating their way back in the dark.

  The hillside had gradually flattened out, and although his thighs were aching, the snow was a lot shallower underneath the forest canopy and they made good speed. As they got closer, he saw the grey shape of what looked like the Fort through the trees, but in front of it—

  ‘Akane! There’s one of them! Stop!’

  The grey shape lying in the snow looked like an upturned bowl. Like the bear that had killed Dai, this one was lying in wait for them, only the snow hadn’t yet accumulated over it enough to form a proper disguise.

  Jun started to run, trying to get to Akane, but almost as soon as he did, she started to run too, away from him, heading almost straight towards the shape lying in the snow.