Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (30 page)

He knew where Melissa should have been, but he was hoping she wasn’t there now. It was a room at the back of the house. Secure, out of the way. Private. He reached the door in two minutes, paused outside, listened with his head to the door for signs of life within. Nothing. Not a sound.

With mounting dread he put a trembling hand on the doorknob, turned and pushed.

The room was in darkness, but he could plainly see the black leather chair in which Melissa Lindegaard lay, almost on her back, outlined against the window which she faced, the blinds drawn. The bright blinking lights on a piece of equipment on a table by her side winked spasmodically, a VDU displayed a colourful array of changing graphs and data streams.

He stepped into the room, looking first to his right and then quickly to his left. He was shocked at what he saw.

Lying on the floor, blood pooling beneath his unmoving body, lay Doctor Sanderson, his dead eyes fixed on Napier. Beyond him, crushed against a wall, lay yet another body, its dark form looking like so much discarded and crumpled clothing. The stench of warm blood reached his nostrils and he swung round instinctively, sensing someone at his back. But there was no one sneaking up behind him. It was definitely Sanderson speaking over the gate intercom, so the unfortunate man had only just been killed. Which meant his murderer was still about somewhere.

He checked the corridor outside the door, his heart racing, but it was empty. He walked quickly and silently over to Melissa’s still form in the chair. By the dying light he made out the pale features of her face, looking peaceful and fast asleep, but he knew that to be an illusion.

‘Melissa?’ he whispered, close to her cheek, checking the readouts on the VDU. She was fine, pulse, heartbeat, everything normal. By the side of the VDU there were two syringes and two small glass bottles filled with transparent liquid. Napier moved to the large window; the blinds had been drawn but a tiny chink allowed a little light to filter through. He pressed his body against the wall and stared through a gap in the blinds. The shrubs and bushes beyond were like hunched hobgoblins keeping watch on the house.

He started when he caught sight of a figure of as man slinking beyond the undergrowth, and pulled back, away from the window so that he couldn’t be seen. When he next checked, the man had gone.

What the hell should he do now? He had to get Melissa out of here. But how?

His mind a turbulent whirlpool of emotions, he placed the gun down on the table by the chair and picked up the syringe and bottle. He scrutinised the label, then jabbed the hypodermic needle into the neck of the bottle. He wasn’t expert at this but he’d seen it done many times, he knew the doses, and he simply had no choice. He had to bring her round first and foremost. He’d contend with getting out of here once he’d brought her back.

He took hold of Melissa’s emaciated left wrist, tenderly lifting her hand. There were two rings on the third finger – an engagement ring and a wedding ring, nothing flashy, actually quite understated. That’s because she said she didn’t want him to buy anything brash and vulgar.

Tears welled in his eyes. He couldn’t help it. The memory of their secret wedding a year after the shooting – in this very house – was a mixture of pain and joy. He was immensely proud that Melissa Lindegaard was his wife, consented to getting married in spite of her condition, in spite of her protests that he should find someone else, that she was slowly dying, that they could never be man and wife in the real sense.

Real sense? His love for her was very real, he told her pointedly, and always would be. That had not diminished. In fact it had grown ever stronger. He would not, could not, abandon her. Ever. He would do anything for her.

He swabbed her arm and made ready to inject her with the serum that would bring her round.

‘Put that down, Robert!’

Napier dropped the syringe, grabbed the gun from the table and swung round.

It was Dean Villiers standing in the doorway, behind him the bulky, deathly-silent Jungius, who had a gun aimed squarely at Napier’s chest.

‘You murdering bastard, Villiers…’ Napier said, swinging the gun so that it covered the tall, slender man.

Villiers didn’t flinch. ‘Hello, Cobalt,’ he said crisply.

‘Lower your weapons.’

All heads turned as Cain swept into the room. The Magwer looked furious at the intrusion. ‘
Bad blood!
’ he hissed, indicating with a bony finger for the two guards to carry out his order to shoot Samuel Wade. But they seemed reluctant to do so and glanced nervously at Cain.

‘That may be so, but I need them both alive for now,’ Cain said. ‘We’ve got visitors. You can do what you want with him later.’

‘He’ll bring devastation and grief!’ said the Magwer. ‘He is
bad
blood!’

‘I’ll have to take that chance. Bring them both,’ Cain ordered the guards, and he left the room, purposely avoiding a fierce accusatory glower from the Magwer, Wade and Keegan being ushered from the cell and down the corridors again. Cain spoke without pausing or turning to look at them. ‘You told me there was no-one else,’ he said. ‘That you were not part of an army. You lied. But that doesn’t come as a surprise. Now I find I have an invading army on my doorstep.’

‘Army?’ said Wade. ‘What army?’

‘Two armoured personnel carriers have been spotted by my border patrols and are bearing down on us. Where there are two cockroaches there’s a nest.’

‘It’s Lindegaard’s men,’ said Keegan.

Cain stopped dead, faced them. ‘Who is this Lindegaard – your leader? How many men will he have sent against us? What are his plans?’

‘You’re right,’ said Keegan. ‘There’s probably an entire army out there. They have weapons you could only dream of. You don’t stand a chance.’

Cain grabbed her by the throat and dashed her against the rough-hewn stone wall. Her eyes bulged as she choked. A guard placed his rifle against the back of Wade’s head to stop him doing anything foolish.

‘I am
Cain!
’ he snarled. ‘Does this Lindegaard know what he takes on? I have an army too!’ He let Keegan go and she clutched her bruised throat, gasping for breath.

‘He knows you better than you think,’ she said. ‘Your forces are primitive compared to Lindegaard’s,’ she coughed. ‘But they have weaknesses. We can help you with that.’ She eyed Wade briefly and he looked at her with narrow-eyed curiosity. ‘I’m guessing that was your intention anyway…’

A troop of Cain’s men rushed by them, rifles and handguns at the ready. There was an air of panic about the place. ‘Bring them,’ he commanded the guards.

In their renewed, hasty, stumbling travels through the tunnels they came across the domed chamber and the same people being held as slaves, none of their subdued number turning to watch them scurry past. The stench, Wade noticed, didn’t seem half as bad this time round, nor did he feel the same revulsion at their cruelly enforced labours. After all, he thought acidly, if what Keegan had said was true, none of this was real. They were characters in a game. Nothing more.

Then why did he still feel the sting of pity?

Cain brought them to a halt beside a steep flight of steps leading up to the surface. ‘How many?’ he asked of an armed man who closed the trapdoor above and clattered urgently down the steps. Wade recognised the man as being the newly promoted second-in-command.

The man was sweating profusely from the heat outside, which looked close to furnace-hot. His hands left a wet patch on the rifle as he altered his grip on reaching the dusty floor.

‘Still the two transports,’ he said.

‘No sign of anyone else?’

He shook his shaggy head. Someone handed him a bottle of water and he drank deep. ‘No sign of more. They appear to be alone. But the vehicles are heavily armed. I’ve never seen such trucks before…’ he said, a kind of awe hushing his voice. ‘Who are they? Are they going to attack?’

Cain pulled Keegan to one side. ‘An army, eh?’ He laughed hollowly. ‘You know what I think?’ he said to her, ‘I think two personnel carriers on their own in no way constitutes an invading army. I also think I know what they’re coming here for, and it isn’t an invasion. They’d have brought more men with them. How many men can each of the transports hold – six, eight?’ He shook his head. ‘You and your friends turning up unexpected like you did in a strange coach, strange garb, fancy weapons – and now two carriers the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It’s not me they’re after. The Lindegaard you speak of, he’s sent those guys for you, and that means you’re special in some way.’

Keegan remained silent. She saw a man approach from behind Cain. He carried the tube-like AT4 anti-tank weapon Keegan had strapped to her motorcycle, and handed it to Cain.

‘Special? If that’s what you want to believe, Cain,’ Keegan returned calmly.

‘Will this knock out those armoured trucks?’ he asked, holding out the anti-tank gun.

‘Maybe.’

He struck her across the face with his fist and she staggered. Wade jumped forward and was hit between the shoulder blades again, the spot already dreadfully sore from previous beatings. He cried in agony and sank to his knees. This was happening just a little too often, he thought bitterly through pain-misted eyes. And none of this is real?

‘I haven’t time for this,’ Cain said. ‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If it hits them true it will easily knock one of them out. I say one because there’s just the one rocket and it’s already in there so don’t be too eager to push any buttons.’

‘And you know how to use it?’

She nodded, watching Wade rising shakily to his feet. ‘We both do.’

‘If you’re so special and they want you badly enough my guess is they’ll bargain for your necks,’ said Cain. ‘We don’t need to come to blows, but I’d like to be prepared, just in case.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on them bargaining,’ said Keegan, knowing Lindegaard wanted them all dead.

‘Then I’ll blow them off the face of the planet with this,’ he said. ‘And you’re going to help me.’

‘And if I won’t help?’

Cain drew out his old Webley revolver and put it to Wade’s head. ‘You already know the answer.’

‘Go ahead. Pull the damn trigger,’ said Wade, staring at Cain from under his brows. Cain’s face was the image of his ex-comrade. Taunting him. ‘What the hell does it matter anyway?’ He closed his tired eyes.

Keegan studied Cain’s expression as his finger tightened on the trigger. Was that confusion causing the twitch in his cheek? Sweat dripped down Cain’s forehead and into the corner of his eye. He wiped it away. Something was going through his mind that shouldn’t be, she thought. He was beginning to doubt himself. And she knew that wasn’t possible, because Cain’s character wasn’t designed that way. Unless she was witnessing the same subtle shift as she’d seen in the other passengers on the bus. She was right: Cain
was
becoming sentient. And Wade’s proximity was somehow the cause of it.

‘Okay, you’ve made your point,’ she said. ‘I’ll help.’

A massive explosion blew in the trapdoor overhead, sending it and a rain of earth and rock crashing down into the tunnel. The concussion knocked everyone flat, the debris falling on and all around them. The jagged, heavy metal trapdoor hit two of Cain’s men, killing them instantly. They were all engulfed in a thick, choking cloud of dust.

Wade’s ears were singing. He couldn’t hear anything but a loud, persistent whine, and his mouth was clogged with earth. He shook his head to try and retrieve his bludgeoned senses, rising slowly and painfully from beneath a pile of earth.

‘Keegan!’ he croaked, spitting out dirt and blood, his head throbbing.

Above him, a massive hole had opened where the trapdoor had been, letting in the searing sunlight, and through the dust and shifting shafts of light he made out Keegan’s prone body lying beneath a mound of earth, the remains of the guards and Cain scattered about the tunnel like so many rag dolls. He heard a groan from Cain, who appeared to be coming round.

Ignoring the soreness that seemed to wrap its spiky arms around his lower limbs he staggered to his feet and picked up a fallen rifle. There were sounds of urgent voices coming from further down the tunnel, somewhere beyond the thick pall of dust, shouting for Cain. Wade lifted the rifle and fired blindly. The patter of feet scurrying away told him they’d backed off for now.

He bent down and hauled Keegan free. She was struggling to breathe, but she was shaking the dizziness away.

‘They’ve locked onto us,’ she said.

‘Lindegaard’s men?’ Wade asked.

She nodded. ‘The Sentinels. Softening the resistance before coming in. You okay?’

‘As good as I’m ever going to get,’ he said.

A gurgling groan made them both turn round. Cain’s dirtied and bloodied face was contorted in agony. His legs were trapped beneath the smouldering remains of the trapdoor and an agonised latticework of bent girders.

‘Get me out!’ Cain gasped.

Wade’s features darkened. Here was the man who’d killed his wife and child, he thought, an opaque cloud of revenge blocking out everything else. He cocked the rifle and aimed it at the stricken man.

‘Leave him, Wade,’ Keegan urged. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not him, remember.’

‘You a mind reader as well now? Or did you know someone who designed me, too?’ he said. ‘Someone who knows the inside of my head.’

‘Now’s not the time, Wade. They’ll be here soon. We’ve got to get away. Cain’s finished already, look at him. Look at that wound…’

There was a long, sharp, almost elegant piece of twisted metal lodged in his side.

‘What does it matter then if I shoot the bastard? Anyhow, he’s a character, a bunch of pixels and computer code; he can’t die, right? He’ll just pop up again somewhere, just like all this will somehow be wiped away and it will be as if nothing happened. It’s a fucking game!’

She gave a limp nod. ‘Ordinarily, yes. But he’s becoming sentient. He’ll die for real this time. No popping back.’

‘Sentient? Are you sure?’

‘It’s you, Wade. You’re making it happen,’ she explained.

‘Yeah, so blame me, why don’t you? And what happens if a soulless bastard like this becomes sentient? It’ll not change him, in fact he’ll probably get worse, a newfound freedom of mind to do as he likes where he likes. This place is pretty screwed up as it is; add in more people like him becoming sentient and the Heights would be even more of a living hell. I ought to make sure he dies right now and not take any chances.’

‘So now you have the right to take another man’s life?’ she said.

‘He ain’t alive!’ he yelled. ‘Neither am I! It doesn’t matter here, does it?
It just doesn’t matter one tiny bit!
Nothing does!
’

Another explosion ripped the air above them, causing the ground to shudder and more of the roof to collapse. Wade and Keegan managed to dash to one side just as tons of rubble cascaded down and buried Cain and his dead guards. Once the dust had settled they could see that the tunnel had been completely blocked at one end.

‘Well that takes care of that moral conundrum,’ Keegan said, wiping dirt from her arms. She bent to her knees and began to scrabble around in the pile of earth.

‘What are you doing now?’ Wade asked.

She put her hands on the AT4 anti-tank weapon and pulled it from the debris, brushing it clean. ‘We’re going to need this,’ she said. ‘I guess we’ll never be able to locate the rest of the ammo I brought along with me. At least we’ve got one shot we can use.’ She looked up to the large hole that had appeared above them, the cloudless sky an intense blue. ‘We can’t get out that way. The Sentinels will be here soon. We’ve got to find another way out.’

‘I’m not leaving without the others. You said you knew where they might be held,’ said Wade.

‘We haven’t got the time…’

‘I mean it, Keegan. I’m not going anywhere without them. Or, to put it another way, I’m not going to your Erewhon with you if they aren’t right there with me. And, need I remind you, unless we find some means of getting across that desert then none of us will be going anywhere.’

‘I’ve got ideas…’

‘Great. Fancy sharing them? You know, in your own bloody time!’

‘Give it a rest, Wade!’ Keegan retorted. ‘I’m putting my own neck on the line for you, so a little less grousing wouldn’t go amiss!’

‘Your neck on the line?’ Wade responded. ‘If I get this right, you can simply beam on out of here, or do whatever it is you do when you’ve had enough of the game or it gets a little too hot for you. Me, I’m stuck with it, apparently.’

‘None of this is my fault, Wade,’ she burst. Then she sighed and looked down at her feet. ‘Shit, that’s not strictly true…’

They heard voices from beyond the pile of rubble blocking the tunnel; people were trying to break their way through.

‘We can argue the ins and outs of this some other time,’ Wade said. ‘Where are the others being kept prisoner, and are we likely to hit trouble along the way?’ He searched one of the dead guard’s pockets for bullets, found some in a pouch on his belt.

‘They’ll soon dig their way through that obstacle. There are also a number of other passages that lead to this spot so I suggest we don’t hang about. We can go this way,’ she said, indicating with a quick dart of her head. The tunnel she walked towards was in darkness, most of the lamps having been blown out by the blasts. ‘There’ll be more of Cain’s men lurking in the tunnels, and the cells where your friends are being held will be guarded unless the explosions have distracted the guards. On top of that, Lindegaard’s men will be at our backs all the way, and no doubt splitting up to try and get at us from different routes. It’s not going to be easy. Like I told you, the Heights is basically a glorified shoot-‘em-up game with hazards at every junction and juncture, and none more so than this place. Lindegaard’s Sentinels are in for one hell of a surprise, though – the company designed their avatars so that they enjoyed unlimited extra life and experienced no pain if hit, meaning they were all but invulnerable and unstoppable. Well one thing we have managed to figure out is how to turn that extra life advantage off for a while.’