Halfhead (5 page)

That explained a lot.

Back in the lounge, DS Cameron was still cursing her way through the pile of severed heads, scowling at the reader. ‘Come on, you little—’

‘I know why he did it.’ Will said as she banged the handheld device against the floor. ‘No, scratch that. I don’t know
why
he did it, but I know why he
thought
he was doing it.’

She hurled the reader at the heads, settled back on her haunches, then looked up at him, her face all pinched and lined. ‘Why does nothing ever sodding work?’

‘The angels: there’s another one in the bedroom. They’re made up of little bits of the Book of Revelation. Chapter fourteen.’

She frowned for a moment, then started to recite in an almost singsong voice, ‘“If any man worship the beast and his image”—’

‘“And whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”’ Will pointed at the heap on the carpet. ‘It’s the tattoo.’

He turned the lightsight on his Whomper down to a more reasonable operating level. ‘Tell the SOC team to start scanning the place. When they’re done, have them bag and tag anything that looks like a body part. Start with the fridge. But tell them to get a shift on. Sooner we’re out of here the better.’

‘OK.’ She stood, then stooped to pick up the discarded reader. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘The other body George showed us, he lived two doors down. I’m going to take a look.’ He turned and made for the door. ‘Oh, and see if you can dig a VR set out of this midden. If our halfhead-hunting friend really did have VR syndrome, there’ll be one in here somewhere.’

The door to flat 47-122 swung open after a small amount of fiddling with the lock. It wasn’t as quick as DS Cameron’s hairgrip method, but it didn’t leave any physical evidence of tampering. The tiny hallway was as nondescript as its neighbour, but the rooms beyond it were completely different. Allan Brown’s flat had been a lair. This had been a home. Right up to the moment when Mr Kevin McEwen came home and shot his wife Barbara in the face. Then he’d gone into the second bedroom and done the same thing to his two children, before turning the gun on himself.

The council clean-up crew had stripped the place back to the fixtures and fittings, leaving it bereft and lifeless. Will stood in the middle of the empty living room and tried to imagine it before Kevin McEwen wiped out his entire family.

Like all connurb block flats it was surprisingly small, even with all the furniture removed: a lounge with a screened off kitchen, one master bedroom, a toilet-shower, and a secondary sleeping cubicle. The rooms were decorated in ancient wallpaper: the pattern a mixture of dirty yellow and green, faded
with age. Picture frames had left shadows on the walls, keeping rectangles of wallpaper rich and vibrant. A faint dark line marking the top edges. The McEwens must have been a house-proud pair, because other than that, the whole place was scrupulously clean.

A faint rumble sounded from down the hall. The SOC team had started scanning.

Will wandered from tiny room to tiny room; amazed that anyone could live somewhere this small, let alone raise two kids here. Every apartment in Monstrosity Square was the same: a testament to the ingenuity and inhumanity of the planning department.

Compressed Urban Habitation they called it. Cram as many people into as small a space as possible, then sit back and wonder why they start killing themselves. And each other.

He checked his watch, gave the meagre flat one last look, then headed back out into the hallway, locking the door behind him.

As Will hurried up the corridor the floor started to tremble. By the time he’d reached Allan Brown’s flat the sonics were in full swing. He had to shout to be heard over the din in the kitchen.

‘HOW MUCH LONGER?’

Stein puffed out his cheeks. ‘DONE THE LOUNGE AND BEDROOM, BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS: SOMETIMES THE MACHINERY WORKS FIRST TIME, SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO KICK THE HELL OUT OF IT.’ He aimed a boot at the scanner’s dented canister. ‘AND IT’S ALWAYS US! I MEAN IT WOULD BE FAIR ENOUGH IF IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE’S TURN NOW AND AGAIN, BUT FOR GOD’S SAKE: EVERY SODDIN’ TIME?’

Thankfully the howling scanning booms meant that Will could only catch snatches of the rant. He nodded in sympathy and when the subsonics kicked in mimed his concern and buggered off through to the main bedroom.

It was slightly quieter in here, but not by much, even with the door shut. DS Cameron and Sergeant Nairn were picking through the mounds of rubbish. A transparent evidence sack sat in the middle of the cluttered bed—there wasn’t much in it.

‘ANY LUCK?’

DS Cameron squinted at him. Then cupped a hand over her ear. ‘WHAT?’

‘HAVE YOU HAD ANY LUCK?’

‘A BIT. WHAT ABOUT YOU?’

‘WASTE OF TIME. THE MCEWENS’ PLACE IS CLEAN AS A WHISTLE, READY FOR THE NEXT POOR SODS TO MOVE IN. NOTHING LEFT.’

‘SORRY, CAN’T HEAR A THING OVER THAT BLOODY—’ The scanners fell silent and DS Cameron paused for a moment, then sighed. ‘God, that’s better…What were you saying?’

But Will was heading back to the kitchen: the scanners still had another cycle to go. If they were quiet
now
it meant they weren’t working. He burst into the room to see Stein and Beaton on their knees, poking at the equipment.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

Beaton jiggled one of the leads. ‘It’s buggered: that’s what’s wrong with it.’

Will checked his watch again. They’d been here almost fifteen minutes. Give it another six or seven to get back to the roof. Twenty-two minutes. Even then that was probably going to be tight. Running at full tilt the scanners would have interfered with all electronic activity within six hundred feet: that included the public virtual reality channels. Robbed of the only real escape they had, the locals would start looking for something else to fill the gap. Religion might have been the opium of the masses, but VR was their crack cocaine.

And no one liked going cold turkey.

‘How long to fix it?’

‘Don’t know.’ Beaton looked up at her colleague who gave a shrug. ‘Five, maybe ten minutes?’

That made it over half an hour. Will shook his head—there was a difference between reasonable risk and reckless stupidity. ‘You’ve got two.’

‘No chance. We’ve got to recalibrate the whole array or it’ll just fall over again.’

‘Then pack it up. We’re leaving.’

Stein shook his head and smiled as if he was talking to a small child. ‘You don’t understand—’

‘If you two aren’t ready to go by the time I count to ten, we’re leaving you behind. You can take your chances with the natives.’

‘But we—’

‘One. Two. Three—’

‘But,’ Stein pointed at the machinery’s dented casing. ‘The subsonics—’

‘Five. Six—’

‘We’ve got to recalibrate, or—’

‘Eight. Nine—’

‘But—’ He was beginning to go red in the face.

‘Ten. Time’s up.’ Will turned and shouted into the bedroom, ‘Sergeant Nairn, get your team together. We’re pulling out.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Nairn emerged from the bedroom with an evidence bag slung over his shoulder. DS Cameron was carrying one too, lurching after the sergeant into the lounge. With fifteen severed heads stuffed into the transparent sack, she looked like a macabre Santa Clause.

‘Did we get a VR set?’

‘Nairn’s got it,’ she said, as the man in question marched out the front door. ‘All twisted up into a pretty little shrine decorated with finger bones and jelly babies.’

Will closed his eyes. Blood and drums in the darkness.
Definitely
time to go.

‘Come on then.’ He ushered her out into the corridor.

A muffled, rapid conversation erupted in the apartment behind them: Beaton and Stein arguing over whether or not they’d really be left behind. Then there was the sound of mechanical scrabbling and professional swearing. The SOC team tumbled out of the flat, forcing their battered equipment back into its casing as they went.

‘All right, all right! We’re coming.’

Will reached up and keyed his throat-mike. ‘Lieutenant Brand, this is Hunter: prepare for dust-off.’

‘Roger that, Hunter. We are hot to trot.’

‘You see,’ said Detective Sergeant Cameron, hoisting her evidence bag, ‘nothing to worry about. I told you this place isn’t half as bad as you think.’

And that was when the shooting started.

It started out as a faint crack, like the sound an ice cube makes dropped into warm water. Then another. And another. Then the sound changed, grew deeper, got closer. Gunfire echoed down from the floors above, and Rhodes’ voice crackled in Will’s earpiece:

‘…repeat, we have hostiles!’

No: this wasn’t fair! He’d been careful. They were heading home!

Sergeant Nairn punched up the power on his Thrummer and shouted: ‘Dickson, Wright, get your arses back here on the double!’

They all sprinted for the broken escalator. Nairn jumped onto the ramp, his Thrummer searching for targets. ‘Talk to me Rhodes, what the hell’s going on up there?’

‘…Fifteen, maybe more. Automatic projectile weapons; I think I see a Zinger.’
The harsh burr of a Thrummer tore through the air.
‘Orders?’

Nairn looked at Will and waited.

‘We…It…’

‘Sir, I hate to hassle you, but now would be a good fucking time.’

‘But we…’ Deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

‘Fine.’ Nairn hit his throat mike again. ‘Rhodes, you are cleared for deadly force. I want everything neutralized and—’

‘No!’ Will grabbed the sergeant’s arm. ‘We’ve had two cases of VR syndrome on this floor in one week, probably hundreds more we don’t know about. You have to keep any contact to a minimum or this whole place will explode.’

‘Oh Jesus…’ Nairn swallowed, hard. ‘Rhodes—disregard last order,
non
-lethal force only.’

‘Sarge? Have you gone off your fuckin’—’

‘Shut up and do what you’re told. People: we need dust-off and we need it now!’ He charged up the ramp, with privates Dickson and Wright hurrying after him, leaving Will, DS Cameron and the SOC team behind.

Angry noises filtered up from the floors below: it didn’t matter that the scanners had been turned off and packed way, it would take time for the building’s local network to reboot. Sherman House was suffering from VR withdrawal. And if the residents couldn’t have computer-generated death and destruction, they could always have the real thing.

‘Erm…’ Beaton shifted from foot to foot. ‘Not meaning to be funny or anything, sir, but shouldn’t we be getting the hell out of here?’

Stein fiddled with the Field Zapper at his hip. The SOC team only carried small arms—anything bigger would have made manoeuvring the scanning equipment impossible. He was flicking the power switch on and off, on and off, never quite allowing it to get fully charged. Eyes darting up and down the corridor. Licking his top lip. The sound of gunfire was getting louder. ‘It’s going to be OK, right? No problem…’

Will pushed them towards the ramp. ‘I’ll take point; DS Cameron, you’re back door.’

She nodded, a faint sheen of perspiration speckling her
brow. The bag of severed halfheads swung as she spun round to face back down the ramp, making her stagger. There was no way she could provide covering fire carrying a sack full of heads and Will told her so.

‘We can’t just leave them, they’re evidence!’

‘OK, fine…give them here. I’ll take—’

A soft ‘phfwoom’ sounded from the floor above and suddenly the entire corridor was bathed in flickering orange light. Then a sheet of flame exploded down the ramp.

‘GET DOWN!’

Will leapt, bouncing off the wall and twisting on the rebound to land behind the escalator, putting its bulk between himself and the fireball. Stein wasn’t so lucky. He was still straining with the scanning equipment when the blaze caught him. Beaton cowered on the other side of the scanner as the fire rushed past; leaving her unscathed while her colleague burned.

Stein staggered off the ramp, his hair and clothes ablaze, screaming.

Will tore off his own jacket and dived on top of him, smothering the flames. Stein’s thrashing body gradually fell still.

The bitter tang of smoke filled the air, and the corridor’s sprinklers finally kicked in, bathing the hallway with lukewarm, stale water.

‘Damn it!’ Will flipped Stein over onto his back and felt for a pulse. The trooper’s face was scarlet and swollen, blackened in places, the skin split open on his cheeks and forehead, wisps of steam drifting up into the ineffective drizzle. There was a faint tremor beneath Will’s fingers, but Stein wasn’t breathing.

‘Is he dead?’

Will looked around to see DS Cameron struggling to her feet. The back of her bright-green suit was burnt, crackling and flaking as she moved. Her meticulous asymmetric bun was ruined: from the nape of her neck up, her hair was tattered and crisped, angry red skin showing through underneath. She was shaking.

More gunshots. Closer now.

Go back to Sherman House, Will. It’ll be good for you, Will. Will it bollocks.

He waved DS Cameron over. ‘Get him into the apartment.’

She stood, looking down at Stein’s roasted body, her face grey and smudged with soot. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he.’

‘He will be if you don’t stop fucking about!’ The corridor was getting darker as the flames on the floor above guttered out in the artificial rain. ‘Move it!’

DS Cameron gritted her teeth, grabbed a handful of Stein’s baked-on jumpsuit, and dragged him back towards flat 47126, swearing all the way. Will scrambled up the escalator ramp, helping Beaton manhandle the SOC gear down onto the soaking carpet. They hauled the heavy metal canister along the corridor, following DS Cameron into Allan Brown’s flat.

Will slammed the front door shut behind them, and keyed his throat-mike.

‘Sergeant Nairn? What’s going on up there?’

The signal was crackly, the older man’s voice breathless and worried:
‘Escalator’s impassable. Some spragger’s brought down the ramp.’
Will could hear gunshots, like small pops of static between the words. The jarring roar of Dickson’s Bull Thrummer drowned out what was said next, but when the noise died down Nairn was saying,
‘…concussion, and Floyd’s been shot in the shoulder. We’re laying down covering fire, trying to keep the wee bastards’ heads down. Can you make the stairs?’

Will watched Private Beaton clamber on top of Stein, rip open his chitin, and start chest compressions.

‘Don’t you dare die on me, Dick. You hear me?’ Keeping a steady rhythm on top of his heart. ‘Don’t you fucking dare…’

DS Cameron had her lips clamped over Stein’s mouth, forcing breath into his lungs. There was no way they could carry him up all the way up to the roof and keep him alive at the same time.

‘Negative. We need another option.’

‘We can’t get down to you. Not without a lot of dead bodies.’

And then the violence would spread and spread until the whole bloody building went up. Will swore.

DS Cameron shouted across the room, ‘We’re losing him!’

‘What do you want us to do?’

Outside in the corridor, the gunfire was getting louder. The locals were coming.

Plan. Need a plan.

Will scanned the room: he had two Network troopers—one on the verge of death—a traumatized Bluecoat, and a knackered set of scanning equipment. And none of the evidence they’d just risked their lives to collect.

‘Where’s the bag of halfheads?’

‘Sir? What should we do?’

‘Shut up and let me think!’

He stuck his head out into the corridor: the evidence bag lay against the wall by the escalator ramp. He was halfway down the hall before he realized what he was doing and by that time it was too late to turn back.

The wall lights were overflowing with stale water, casting wriggling snakes of dim light as Will splashed past. Now that the fire was out, the sprinklers were little more than an incontinent dribble. They’d probably done more damage to the building than the flames had.

He slithered to a halt by the escalator, grabbed the discarded evidence bag and hefted it over his shoulder—staggering under the weight. He peered up the ramp. Half way up, it came to an abrupt end, dirty orange rebar sticking out of the fractured foamcrete. Sergeant Nairn was right: there was no way anyone could jump that gap. Not without a body-wire…

‘Fuck.’ It was like a kick in the goolies, but it was the only option.

He reached up with trembling fingers and clicked on his
throat-mike, trying to keep his voice steady: ‘Lieutenant Brand, I need you to get that Dragonfly airborne.’

‘Forget it. We’re not leaving you behind!’

‘Just do what you’re bloody well told, for once.’ There was something rectangular and half-melted at Will’s feet: Stein’s Field Zapper—the one he’d kept fiddling with—its plastic casing blistered and cracked. As Will bent down to pick it up, the building went ominously silent.

Not good.
Definitely
not good.

Will splashed his way back down the corridor, lugging the heavy bag of severed heads. ‘I want that gunship outside apartment one twenty-six, forty-seventh floor—drop out five bodywires and a cargo net. We’re going for hard D.’

‘From inside a building? Are you mad?’

‘If you’ve got any better ideas, let’s hear them, because I’m all out.’ His earpiece went silent. And then,

‘Nairn, get your team back to the ship. Pickup in forty-five seconds.’
Static burst across the signal as the Dragonfly’s engines went to full power.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Will.’

Struggling along the gloomy, waterlogged corridor Will hoped so too.

He was almost at the flat’s front door when a hard crack sounded behind him. A plume of water danced at his feet. Another shot and the bag on his back jumped, throwing him forward. Will just managed to stay on his feet as more bullets tore into the walls around him, sending out puffs of paint and shredded plasticboard.

He scrambled into the flat and slammed the door shut.

‘We’ve got company!’ He heaved the bag of heads into the middle of the room. ‘Get Stein ready to move. Beaton, clip his bodyharness to yours, I don’t want him bashing his brains out on the window frame. Cameron,’ he pointed at the broad strips of black plastic blocking out the world, ‘tear that crap down.’

She grabbed a corner and tugged. Light flooded into the room.

Will turned Stein’s burnt Field Zapper over in his hands. The battery lights were still winking away merrily to themselves: with any luck it wouldn’t short out and electrocute him.

‘Where the hell’s that damn Dragonfly?’

Right on cue the sunlight disappeared again. The flat’s windows rattled in their frames as Lieutenant Brand’s gunship twisted in the air, dipping its nose down to expose the double drop bay doors in its belly.

A single bullet thudded into the apartment door, ripping a hole straight through it and into the tiny hall. And then another one. And another.

‘That’s as close as you get!’

Will pulled up his Whomper and thumbed the trigger. The assault rifle kicked in his hands—its bark deafening in the confines of the filthy lounge—and the front door tore itself apart. One moment it was there, and the next it was a hail of sizzling plastic, pattering down on the threadbare carpet. He slung the Whomper over his shoulder and powered up Stein’s Field Zapper. The weapon’s lights flickered then died.

‘Fuck.’ He thumped it against the wall. Shook it. Tried again.

A tatty, ginger-haired figure leapt into the gap where the door used to be.

She was big-boned rather than fat, dressed in the same eclectic, colourful rags they’d seen this morning. Tribal scars twisted across her pale skin, pulling at the corners of her ice-green eyes. She was carrying an old F24, virtually an antique, and as she brought it up, a smile split her face. Teeth filed to points.

Will shot her.

The arc from Stein’s Field Zapper caught her in the chest, throwing her back into the sodden corridor. Stepping forward, Will pointed the weapon at the waterlogged carpet and held the trigger down.

A chorus of shrieks and squeals erupted in the hall as the blue lightning danced down the corridor. Then there was the sound of bodies hitting the floor. And then silence. Will didn’t risk sticking his head out to check the results: someone might have been wearing insulated boots.

DS Cameron forced the lounge window open. Debris leapt into the air, dancing and spinning in the hot backwash from the Dragonfly’s engines, like angry, paper seagulls.

Sergeant Nairn dropped from the ship’s belly, a cluster of body wires reeling out behind him. He grabbed at the open window with both hands and DS Cameron lunged forwards, dragging him into the room. Before his feet could even touch the carpet, gunfire was clanging off the ship’s hull: a Network Dragonfly made a big and inviting target.

Something bellowed from the floor above and the whole craft lurched.

‘Come on people, get a move on: we can’t hang around here all bloody afternoon!’

Will helped Nairn clip on Stein and Beaton’s bodywires while DS Cameron wrapped another set of wires through the handles on the scanning canister, finishing them off with a huge, in elegant knot. The bag of heads went into the cargo net.

That just left Will and the Detective Sergeant.

As they struggled into their harnesses a tubular canister bounced in through the door and landed on the grubby carpet—little red lights chasing each other round and round the ends.

‘Oh shit…’ Will punched his throat-mike and braced himself. ‘Hard D. Now!’

The Dragonfly leapt away from the building, yanking them out of the living room window. The scanning canister caught the frame side on, glass and twisted aluminium spraying everywhere. Someone screamed, the sound whipped away as the gunship rolled into a tight turn, accelerating hard.

The explosion tore Allan Brown’s apartment to shreds.

The sun hangs in the dirty blue sky like a jewelled furnace. It’s blurred around the edge, a faint shimmer of chemical fog that grows thicker as she watches. The wind must have shifted, bringing with it the firestacks’ industrial perfume.

She’s been wandering the streets for hours, drifting through her own personal smog. Faces swim in and out of focus: colleagues, patients, victims…

Something flashes overhead and she turns to watch it roar across the sky. Small figures dangle beneath it, slowly being drawn up into its belly. The shape is familiar, haunting: like a bad dream only half remembered. But right now everything is like that.