Fletcher (15 page)

#0311

“I am so unbelievably high right now.

“I don’t know what this girl gave me. I have no idea what she put into my system. All I know is that she has enough scalpels to carve up an army, and I’m in the mood to do exactly that. My mind-brain is floating. I can’t even feel my gunshot wounds.

“The client is going to be happy. One dead CEO, coming right up. And as for me? I need to get this doctor on retainer.”

18: Blood Writes

The dance with Eric began in earnest. My old city apartment was swallowed in a massive burst of fire. I watched the RailTech squad enter through my sniper-window. Very resourceful—they silently unscrewed the frame and lifted it out of the way. The first trio surrounded my bed, raised their silenced weapons and riddled me with bullets.

I watched this all through the hidden cameras. After their pre-emptive strike, they stripped back the sheets. Even through the visors, their disappointment was evident.

My finger was poised above the ‘Send’ button. The message was ready, a sixteen-digit code to a number only I knew. I wanted to see what else they did.

The captain—I assumed—unlocked the front door. I was glad I’d waited. Two more units entered the house. That made for nine in total. They fanned out and began to meticulously search the place. I’m not even sure I’d have noticed. Everything was checked and returned to its exact position. It was an impressively well-coordinated sweep.

They didn’t have eyes in the ventilation ducts and the crawl-spaces. Two days ago I’d wormed my way inside and gotten busy. I pressed the button, and my temporary phone started ringing.

The effect was notable. I’d hidden the phone in the space under my desk. They thought it was coming from the drawers. The noise held them in place until the third ring.

The picture cut out. The sound reached me, perched on top of the mall, a few seconds later—a dull, meaty boom. I looked at the screen and counted down.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, si—aha. Early.

‘Unknown caller’ wanted to chat.

“And here I was thinking you’d forgotten about me,” I started gaily.

“It is not too late to walk away.”

“You’re such a stiff. Lighten up. Oh, and before you try kill me again, you should know that I’ve put a bunch of insurance archives out there. Auf Wiedersehen, fuckstain.”

I hung up. I’d disabled the GPS on my phone manually, but there was still the potential for triangulation. I’d made the decision to avoid longer calls. There was nothing to tie me to the Helix, except for Dante. I had thought about killing him, going so far as to break into his home as he slept.

“I loved her,” he had told me, as I stood in the shadows of his room. “She didn’t love me back, but that’s not important. I won’t sell you out to the thugs who murdered her.”

I took his word for it. My heart wasn’t really in killing him: he was interesting. He was also a phenomenal bartender. I left, silently. No Dante-killing, then. From the twisting labyrinths of the lab, I laid my plans.

The goal was to kill Strauch. I could murder him in his office. I could rig explosives below his route to work. I could execute him in his home.

“You will die in total obscurity,” I had said. Or was it utter obscurity?

Who remembers?

I’d murder him in his home, I decided. I would wake him and cut his first word short. He wouldn’t appear on the news until hours later, maybe even days. Afterwards? I’d have to see how, or if, RailTech responded. I’d burn that bridge when I got to it.

A week later, I found a present outside the Helix. A heavy pallet rested on a wheeled platform. “
Open underground
—
D
” was scrawled on every side. I pushed it inside and brought it all the way to the sixth floor. I levered open the lid and saw tinfoil.

Dante is blocking cell transmissions.

I checked my phone. We were dead to the world this far under the ground. I pulled the cover back.

Helmets, assault weapons and armoured jackets—the spoils of war from the RailTech units. Another note from Dante.

“
Thought this might be useful
.”

I spent a long afternoon playing with my new toys. The helmets were exquisite, featuring some kind of impact-absorbing gyroscopic frame. That would explain how Eric had shrugged off my head-shot like it was a bad knock. The armour was hardly less impressive: overlapping, flexible metal plates—some kind of titanium alloy—seemed to provide a tiny layer of crumple-space to absorb impact, and were shaped to pull blades away from the vital areas.

The assault weapons were a feat unto their own. Gunfire rang in the lower passageways as I tried them out.  Lightweight and accurate: a pleasure to use. I unclipped the ammunition from eight of the rifles and made a neat little stockpile. I tinkered around and dismantled these eight for spare parts and widgets. The scopes held a particular interest—small solar-powered batteries provided a high-contrast sight for night combat. I put one in my pocket. It would be useful to carry around, even if it wasn’t attached to a steel-spitting artefact of death.

This had taken place a week ago. Now, I’d returned to my nest on top of the mall, to think and to watch. I scanned the RailTech building with the scope. The zoom was in the mid-range combat zone; my binoculars were far better at the job. Still, it was nice to see the building lit up in high-contrast green and black. I imagined hosting a rave in its gutted remains.

The thought of dancing curled and morphed into thoughts of Valerie. A scowl contorted my face and my mood soured even further. Despite successfully blowing up another squadron of RailTech agents, there was no real satisfactory rush.

Careful not to dislodge tiles, I made my way down from my nest and back into the inner maze of the mall.

This time I salvaged a rare treat—canned condensed milk. I spied it while levering a shelf onto its side, the tell-tale grey-wink of tin poking through the dust and dirt. I pounced, naturally. Tinned food is gold standard in general. My discovery managed to beat back the encroaching feeling of anger.

Condensed milk was the shit. As with most tinned goods, the shelf life was practically infinite. Unless I was unlucky, the contents would still be good to go. I wrapped my expedition up and skipped down the stairs.

I hadn’t entered this way, instead opting to take a climb up the side, more of a challenge that way. I breathed in tentatively. The smell of faeces hadn’t departed.

“I did warn you.” I muttered, lifting a lighter. “You’re lucky I just found something nice. Otherwise, toasties.”

There was a deep breathing from the depths of the rug-heap. Breathing and loud chewing, but no vocal response. My grim feelings returned.

I held the lighter in front of me, lit it, and stepped into the darkness. The breathing was intense and laboured. I hoped I wasn’t about to stumble onto some post-apocalyptic junkie orgy. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a porn genre already. My other hand tightened around my tinned prize.

I stopped as the silhouette came into view. I lifted my thumb off the lighter as slowly as I could, and waited for my eyes to accustom.

He—or she, it was dark—was hunched over and thrashing to and fro. Something guttural ratcheted through its sinuses into a snarl. The chewing resumed over gasps.

This was not what had stopped me. What had stopped me was the second figure, motionless and sprawled, underneath the snarler.

I picked up more detail.

Dinner is served.

“Oh my.”

I said it louder than I wanted to. A deep, sucking breath and the thrasher lifted its head. Even in the gloom I saw the bits and pieces falling from its chin. The snarl rattled around the parking lot, and I took a step backwards.

The ground writhed beneath my feet as the rugs squirmed and came to life. My grounded foot was lifted in the quake and I fell to the floor. A dreadful, deadly (dreadly?) scream burst from the junkie, and it lunged at me.

It’s within seven metres. No time for the gun.

I tightened my grip and swung, timing my blow perfectly. It passed under one outstretched arm and connected with the jaw. There was a yowl and my attacker was deflected. It wasn’t over. The ground beneath me shook.

A second assailant squirmed out from under my feet and grabbed my leg. I pumped my free foot into its face once, twice, three times, and I felt the teeth give way. The noise shifted to distress and the pressure on my leg was released.

I bolted to my feet as the first attacker returned. I stepped to the side and put my weight into an uppercut. It—long hair, slender features, she—ran straight into my attack, and I felt my knuckles meet the throat. Her screaming cut off and was replaced with a frenzied choking.

More cries sounded in the darkness, too many to fight. The stairs back into the mall were closer, but I would risk getting cornered. I turned and began to run towards the light.

One hundred metres.

I pressed the lighter and flipped a catch before tossing it to my left. Glancing over my shoulder, I watched a rug catch fire. My left hand was still tightly closed over the tin can.

Seventy metres.

I plunged my free hand into my coat and grabbed the pistol. A hiss issued (hissued?) from my left and I fired two rounds, blindly. There was a whimper and a puff of dust as something collapsed into the dark.

Almost there.

The sounds from behind me were incomprehensible, a kind of broken gibbering peppered with the rasp of raw throats. My feet no longer pounded on fabric and instead slammed against hard concrete. They were keeping up with me. I could swear I felt fingers grab at my nape, trailing through my hair.

Ten metres.

I burst into the open moonlight and swung around as something plunged out behind me. There was a loud report as I pulled the trigger, but the body maintained momentum and slammed into me. I fell backwards, pinned under my attacker. He wasn’t moving.

I kept my barrel trained on the parking lot. The screaming had shifted: it didn’t crusade towards me with purpose. Instead, it seemed to centre around the growing inferno below. Smoke began to trickle out, and was lost to the night sky.

Strange emotions infused the voices. Some seemed angry, some seemed terrified. Some seemed to be howling for the sake of making noise. I cautiously levered the body off and got to my feet.

What the fuck is going on?

I stepped backwards, slowly. My arm remained raised. My finger trembled on the trigger. Horror shook me and I checked my condensed milk. The can was dented, but the seal was intact. I let out a sigh of relief. Burnt flesh mingled with the smoke, and I started to laugh.

I didn’t stop until the Helix doors hissed shut behind me.

***

I extended Quisling’s cell. She now had the shackle length to walk around the entire laboratory. I removed the glassware and anything else potentially dangerous: I’d walked in on her attempting to open her wrists with a broken pen. Naturally she’d botched the entire affair.

Remember kids. Razor goes down the street, not across the road. Amateur.

She had access to a tap and a bathroom now, chain stretched to the fullest. She had struggled and tried to run as I had uncuffed her ankle, but she was weak and fragile. It hadn’t been hard to chase her down.

She had wailed like a banshee: “Let me go let me go get off me you fucking psycho just kill me.” I had brought my knee into her stomach. There was no wailing for a while after that.

She glared at me from across the glass. She seemed determined not to indulge me. I think it was an attempt to bore me so I’d go in there and snap her pretty, supple neck. She wasn’t in luck. Her defiance interested me more than anything she could have offered. She simply did not realise it.

I mirrored her pout, then exaggerated it. She kicked her leg petulantly, creating a merry jingle of steel on tiles, and mouthed something obscene. I winked and pushed a box through the door. Her face lit up for a tiny second before she fixed her expression: the box was full of bread and fruit. She dropped her pretence, then fell to her knees and started tearing at a loaf. I left before she looked up again.

***

Vincent had disappeared again. He wasn’t answering calls or responding to texts. I considered the possibility that he’d been called in to take care of me, but I doubted it. He usually sent me a cursory message. I thought about the Seychelles.

Usually.

I had kept an eye on the secret service chatter though one or two contacts. Something about China. Nuclear strike detected in central Africa. Advances in a Red Masque vaccine coming from beleaguered Israel. Nothing about me, or Vincent, or RailTech. Disappointing.

This brought me to the apartment of… I forget his name. He used to work on the force with Vincent. I wanted to use him as Vince-bait.

“See,” I said, making a high-pitched voice, “I’m looking for someone very special. I’ve tried calling. I’ve tried texting. He didn’t even respond to the bat-signal in the sky. It’s all very perplexing. So, I guess, long and short, this is why I’m killing you and painting on a wall in your blood.”

I put down the bloody puppet and got to work. Tiny bubbles of red foam collected around what was left of his lips. He wasn’t in a good state.

“Look, don’t take it too badly,” I continued. “The human body has plenty of unnecessary parts. Take the face, for example. I don’t recall anyone living a long and painful life without one.”