by Chris Ward
The last one looked like it wanted to leave, but as it turned towards the gap between the west wing and the dormitory, it stumbled sideways and rolled onto its back. As it lay there, belly facing up at the sky, it let out a hideous shriek that made Ken shiver. The sound seemed to last forever, an antithesis for their downturned sludge rock, a last desperate display of resistance.
As the sound died and the creature fell still, Ken let go of his guitar and shoved his hands into his pockets, desperate for warmth. One last open chord rang out across the courtyard as Jun and Akane also stopped playing and turned to look at him.
‘Did we do it?’ Jun croaked. ‘Did we kill them?’
‘It looks like it,’ Akane said, her voice sounding surprisingly downcast.
Ken felt the sudden urge to high-five all of them, but when he looked up at Karin, the flames from the Grand Mansion inferno lighting up her face, his hope dispersed like snowflakes blown by the wind.
She was staring past them at the pub, a look of hopelessness on her face.
‘Don’t stop!’ she screamed, and then the rest of her words were lost beneath an earsplitting roar.
Forbes had said there were six. Ken had forgotten one.
The king.
43
Exit strategies
Ogiwara didn’t want to think about what was going on outside. He had hidden away in an upstairs bedroom for a while, watching the forest out of the window until it got too dark to see, but suddenly he heard a commotion from downstairs, the sound of an engine followed by a splintering crash. He lay there in the dark for a while, waiting and listening. He was tempted to just hide under the bed until morning, but his curiosity got the better of him.
A few minutes after everything had gone quiet, he sneaked out of the room, crept to the end of the corridor and peered through the door. It was empty, so he went through a door on the other side, into a classroom which had windows facing out on the main complex.
He was several rooms to the left of the main door, but he could clearly see something huge crouched in front of it. Then the road outside was illuminated by two circles of light, and he gasped, wondering what kind of a monstrosity was this. Then he realised—it wasn’t a bear at all, but a snowplow.
He couldn’t make out the driver in the shadows of the cab above the lights, but as he watched, it pulled into reverse and turned away from the building, moving in shaky jerks away towards the main road through the complex. Whoever was driving it was leaving him behind. He banged on the windows, then opened one and shouted out, but the driver obviously didn’t hear him as the plow turned in the direction of the Grand Mansion.
I have to catch it, he thought. It could be my only chance.
He rushed out of the room and down the corridor, taking the stairs two at a time. The Fort was dark and silent, with only the last twilight filtering in through the small downstairs windows guiding him as he ran towards the main entrance.
He was nearly there when something dark and huge stepped in through the open doorway, blocking out the light.
Ogiwara cried out and tried to turn, succeeding only in losing his footing. He was already trying to get up even as he struck the floor, bashing his knees and elbows as he landed on the hard surface. The bear growled, and Ogiwara broke into a run, fleeing for his life.
It was too close to escape by hiding in one of the rooms; it would see him. He had to find somewhere secure where it wouldn’t be able to follow. He burst through the double doors at the end of the corridor and into another dim corridor lined with bedroom doors. He heard the double doors burst open behind him as the bear followed, but he didn’t dare look back.
He reached the end of the corridor and found one door standing open, a set of steps leading down. He pulled the door shut behind him and started down in pitch blackness, terrified of what he was running into, but more scared of what was coming behind.
The stairs gave way to a concrete floor and he stopped for a moment, trying to figure out where he was. He turned on his heels as he heard the door breaking open above him. Could it get down those stairs? They had seemed tight, but how flexible—and how desperate—was that bear?
A tiny glow was coming from a door in the corner. It was the only thing he had to go on, so he ran towards it and found himself at the top of a spiraling metal staircase, lit by occasional LED emergency lights fitted into the ceiling.
This doorway was much tighter than the other, but he pulled the door shut anyway and started down. He had nowhere else to go, so he hurried as quickly as he could, descending into the earth. After a few flights he slowed down, confident the bear couldn’t follow, but aware that his way out was blocked. It was down or nowhere.
On the next landing he saw something dark lying on the ground. As he reached it he bent down, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, and pulled back again with a gasp. A dead bear cub about the size of a dog lay on the ground. Unlike bear cubs he had seen on TV and in zoos, it was anything but cute, a monstrosity of teeth and lumps of metal poking out through its fur. He nudged it with his foot, but it didn’t move.
A couple of landings later he found another, then several more as he continued to descend. All of them were dead, and they seemed to be getting smaller, as if the strongest had made it the furthest up the stairs, as if they had been chasing someone.
At the bottom of the stairs he stepped out into a dull concrete corridor. The bodies of several tiny bear cubs no bigger than his foot littered the ground.
‘Ugly mothers, weren’t you?’ he said, nudging one with his foot, repulsed at the wires protruding from its body as if it had been involved in a collision with a steel brush.
This had to be the underground base that old man had been talking about. He carried on a little further, looking through doors into rooms, but the place had been trashed. He found several more dead bears, and a few dead maintenance workers, who, from the smell, had been dead a couple of days.
Then he stepped through a steel door out into something straight out of one of those crappy children’s adventure novels that Mishima had liked to read.
‘What the hell is this? Journey to the Centre of the Earth, my butt crack.’
A huge cave lit by massive spotlights stretched away from him, arcing around a bend out of sight. The cave floor was a mock forest, trees and rocks and streams. Several catwalks stretched across to the opposite cave wall, while various ladders and metal steps led down through a wire mesh that was stretched across everything.
‘Help me!’
‘What the fuck? Matsumoto?’
Jun’s voice drifted up from behind a screen of vegetation almost directly below him. Ogiwara looked down. He couldn’t see Matsumoto, but there was a hole in the wire mesh where a human could have fallen through.
‘I fell. Help me, please.’
Ogiwara smiled. He would help him all right. He was a good sort; he’d help Matsumoto up, but not before he’d given him the pasting he’d been asking for. Fuck the bears, fuck British Heights, fuck all those other pricks whether they were alive or dead. This was personal.
‘Hey, Jun,’ he called back. ‘It’s Ogiwara. Don’t worry, mate, I’ll come down and get you.’
A set of metal steps led down from the edge of the catwalk. Ogiwara started down, reaching a steel gate about halfway that blocked the way through.
‘It’s locked,’ Jun called. ‘Pull the lever on the wall to your left to open it. I fell, and I couldn’t get out. It only opens from the outside.’
‘Sure, no problem.’
He yanked down the lever and heard a click. He pushed the door open and descended the last flight of steps to the spongy ground below, trying not to clench his fists, trying not to let that prick Matsumoto know what was coming until the first punch landed.
‘Where are you, you … my, um, friend?’
‘I’m over here. I fell in the bushes, but my leg is trapped under a rock. Can you move it for me? I can’t get up.’
Ogiwara smiled. Perfect. The rock
would hold Matsumoto still while he took a few clean shots. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Just hang on a moment.’
He reached a screen of bamboo, and pushed it aside, wading through. There was Matsumoto, lying on the ground, waiting for his beating—
It wasn’t Matsumoto.
Ogiwara screamed as the figure leapt at him, closing his eyes to block out the sight of the hideous, birdlike face that obscured the visage of a man. Sharp, twisted talons reached for his neck and the last thing he heard was a screeching, crowlike scream.
Kurou threw the body of the student aside and headed up the stairs and through the door that the boy had conveniently unlocked for him. His body still tingled and ached from the electrified wire mesh, but it would fade with time. The backup generators had left the power too low to kill him, but until the boy had showed up he had been faced with a difficult and painful climb.
He went into the incubator room and stared with dismay at the ruins of his life’s work. His plan had been destroyed, and Mr. Park, if he ever found out Kurou still lived, would be very disappointed indeed.
Taking a few personal objects and a computer tablet filled with contacts and important account information from a safe in the incubator room wall, Kurou headed back towards the enclosures. There was another way out that he knew of, but while he might have to walk as far as the nearest town he could arrange for someone to smuggle him out of the country. The big question was what to do now. Mr. Park’s men would be on his trail, and with his distinctive face nowhere would be safe. Except of course, somewhere with closed boundaries.
He smiled. Britain was in upheaval right now, if Internet reports were to be believed. The last one he had read had mentioned that it had closed its borders to Europe and broken away from the European Confederation.
If he could find a way in, perhaps he could offer his services to the new government.
Smiling to himself, he headed for the secret way out that not even Forbes had known about.
44
Last stand in the snow
‘Lolo!’ Karin screamed, as the gigantic rampaging bear broke through the wall of the pub and stepped out into the open, bared its teeth and roared at them so loud that Jun thought his ears would burst.
The creature no longer looked like a bear at all. It was something out of a nightmare—a monstrous porcupine carved out of ice, a mess of silvery spines with an enormous snapping maw in the centre. Only as it took a few steps forward and several of its spines broke off did Jun realise what it was, a bear whose fur had turned into needles of ice, as if it had been submerged and then the water had frozen as the creature had tried to shake it out.
Lolo tingled like Christmas bells as he bounded towards them.
Ken started to play again, with Akane pounding away on the bass, but it seemed to have little impact on Lolo as he slammed into the van, knocking it sideways. Akane managed to jump clear, but Jun and Ken fell into the snow as the van toppled over. Jun felt a sudden heavy weight bearing down on him, and knew he would have been crushed were it not for the snow that cushioned him all around. As it was, he was still trapped from the waist down. He looked across at Ken who was similarly trapped, but on his back with the guitar pressed down on top of him. With desperation in his eyes, Ken hacked at the guitar with his one free hand, but no sound came.
The light from the burning Grand Mansion blinked out as something huge and glittering loomed over Jun. Easily the height of the bus, Lolo was the biggest creature he had ever seen, an abomination of science and biotechnology. It almost seemed honourable to die at the claws of such a creation, but Jun shut his eyes, not wanting to see the end when it came.
Be quick, his mind pleaded.
‘Hey, you big bastard! Over here!’
Akane, no!
The girl was standing halfway across the courtyard, waving her arms above her head. Lolo growled and turned towards her, huge head lowering like a cat ready to pounce.
‘You big ugly turkey!’ Akane shouted. ‘Come on! Over here!’
She turned and ran as Lolo bounded forward, faster than a speeding truck. Akane headed for the west wing, towards the broken wall of the swimming pool. Jun wanted to shout out to her, but it was no use. He could do nothing to stop the massive, terrifying beast as it bore down on her. As Lolo came up behind her, the bear lifted a huge paw and swatted Akane to the ground. His jowls stretched back, ready to rip her to shreds—
—then he was rolling forward as Karin slammed the snowplow into his back, the blade raised to push him forwards and down, using his momentum to shove him through the broken glass wall and into the swimming pool room from where Jun guessed he had got his covering of ice. The engine of the plow roared as Karin slammed the vehicle forward into the building. There was a splash as Lolo hit the water, then the plow broke through and drove onto his back as he fell under the water. Lolo thrashed, but the plow was jammed between the bear and the room’s low ceiling; his huge limbs could only shake it back and forth. He let out one last defiant roar, then there was a crackle of electricity and the bear went still.
Ken had dragged himself out from the snow and he came over to dig Jun free. Over by the swimming pool room, Karin was climbing up out of the snow where she had jumped from the snowplow’s cab, and was peering in through the opening towards Lolo’s submerged body.
Jun pushed past Ken and ran straight to Akane. She lay on her back in the snow, but as he reached her he knew it was too late. Her body was lacerated by Lolo’s claws, and her face was white and pale as her last strength drained away. As he knelt down beside her and pulled her up into his arms, she gave him a weak smile.
‘Jun…’
‘Akane … oh god, why? Please don’t die. Please don’t leave me.’
‘It’s all right, Jun,’ she said. She tried to lift a hand, but it fell back in the snow. Jun took it and pressed it against his face.
‘Akane,’ he cried, unable to stop the tears. ‘Why did you do it? Why?’
‘Jun … it’s okay,’ she said. ‘I never really wanted to leave. I’m happy to stay here forever now.’ She coughed. ‘Thank you, Jun.’
‘What do you mean? What for?’
‘For coming back to me. All those years, I lost my best friend … but you came back. You came back to me. I love you, Jun. I always loved you, and I always … will.’
‘Akane…’
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘Thank you for coming … back.’
Jun looked up at the sky and screamed as he felt her go limp in his arms. Ken’s hand fell on his shoulder and nearby he could hear Karin crying. They had lost friends too, but it didn’t matter. As he held Akane’s body in his arms nothing mattered any longer, not British Heights, not the bears, not anything.
For a few brief days she had come back to him.
Now it was over, and she had gone.
Epilogue
Endings and Beginnings
Jun had to admit it, Ken and Karin made a good couple. As they walked down the aisle, arm in arm while a handful of close friends tossed confetti, they carried the look of shared happiness that only a closeness to suffering could give. They held each other with a tightness that suggested they never wanted to let go, that they were afraid to, even. Jun smiled as he tossed the little packet of tissue confetti over their heads. He was happy for them. In their collective grief they had discovered that they shared more in common than they had expected, and from the ashes of their lives they had found a budding flower of respect for each other that had bloomed into love.
They were the lucky ones.
Later, as the reception drew to a close, Ken found Jun standing out on the balcony of the sixteenth floor hotel restaurant, looking out over a view of Tokyo. He patted the younger man on the back, and held out a glass of wine.
‘I’m too young…’
‘Yeah, whatever. Just drink it.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I guess there’s no point telling you not to jump, because if you were planning to you would
have done it by now.’
Jun smiled. ‘I’m not going to jump.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘You still looking for a vocalist for your new band?’
Ken smiled. ‘You know I am.’
‘Well, I’m interested. I have some other stuff to do too, though.’
‘Like what?’
‘I need to find him. Everything that happened … it was his fault.’
Ken sighed. The body of Professor Crow had never been found. They had found Ogiwara’s body in the same area into which Jun said Crow had fallen, but of the one responsible for everything, there had been no sign.
‘He’s out there somewhere,’ Jun said. ‘Akane … would still be alive if it wasn’t for him. As would all the others.’
‘He was only partly to blame, Jun. Yeah, so he built them, but Forbes was the power behind everything.’
‘But he’s dead, and Crow is not.’
Ken sighed. He patted Jun on the shoulder. ‘There are lessons to be learned from Akane,’ he said. ‘One of them is when it’s time to let go.’
‘He’s still out there,’ Jun whispered.
Ken nodded. He patted Jun on the shoulder one more time, then turned and headed back into the party. As he reached the door he paused. Unable to stop himself, he turned and looked back.
Jun was still there, staring out at the night sky.
END
The Castle of Nightmares
The Castle of Nightmares
(Tales of Crow #2)
A group of stranded tourists, a missing billionaire, and a dead woman in the woods, killed by some kind of giant bird. As lights blink on and off in the seemingly deserted Heigel Castle, it appears that Professor Crow is back…