Lex Talionis

by Keira Michelle Telford

  “It’s okay if you’re not that good.”

  “I’m good,” Carmen insists. “I just know where this little game is headed, and I don’t want to go to Manchester with you.”

  “Not everyone can be a fine marksman,” Silver goads her. “I’m sure you probably excel at other things.”

  “I’m a fine shot.” Carmen glowers.

  “Prove it.” Silver dangles the gun in front of her.

  Carmen snatches it up, but hesitates. “We’re too far away from the target to hit a perfect bullseye with a poxy handgun.”

  “We’re at one hundred yards—half the distance you saw me shoot from yesterday—and you’re holding a replica of a forty-five caliber HK USP Elite. If you know what you’re doing, you can easily make the shot from here.”

  Carmen raises the gun and aims, taking a few deep breaths.

  “Don’t forget to compensate for bullet drop.” Silver moves in behind her, reaching around her and raising her aim. “Ten to fifteen inches at this range.”

  Silver’s proximity makes Carmen gasp.

  “Your right arm controls the vertical angle of the gun,” Silver keeps going, her head over Carmen’s left shoulder, “and your left arm controls the horizontal angle.” She taps Carmen’s right elbow. “Don’t lock your elbow, else recoil will be a bitch.”

  Carmen takes another deep breath, tensing slightly when she feels Silver’s hands on her waist.

  “The gun’s in single-action mode right now,” Silver reminds her, “so pull the hammer back, then aim.” She keeps her hands on Carmen’s waist. “Feel the wind, too. Adjust your aim for the breeze.”

  Carmen tries her best to concentrate. When she eventually fires a shot, it hits marginally off-center: a little high, and a little to the left.

  “That’s not bad,” she declares, grinning as they walk over to look at it. “I’ve never shot from that range before.”

  Silver shrugs. “You can do better.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Carmen’s pride withers.

  Silver points at the bullet hole. “You were a little high, which means you anticipated the recoil and pulled up slightly before you fired.”

  “Or you inaccurately calculated the bullet drop.” Carmen challenges her, hands on hips.

  “I didn’t miscalculate shit.” Silver smiles at her. “And you were a little to the left, which means you were too heavy-handed with the trigger. Wanna give it another go?”

  Determined to hit the bullseye, Carmen wipes the sulk off her face and walks back to the hundred yard line. Again, Silver stands behind her.

  Used to firing double-action only guns, Carmen starts aiming before she pulls back the hammer, so Silver reaches forward and does it for her.

  “Squeeze the trigger slowly and gently.” She puts her hands back on Carmen’s waist. “It’s like touching a woman: don’t force her, don’t rush her, apply just enough pressure till you feel her come … or, in this case, click.”

  Carmen feels herself blush, glad that Silver’s standing behind her so she can’t see it.

  “I’ve really got to introduce you to a friend of mine. She likes to make fornication analogies as well.”

  A few seconds pass silently. Silver’s standing close enough that Carmen can feel her body heat. She’s aware of Silver’s hands on her waist, holding her firmly, keeping her steady, and she tries not to read too much into it. She takes one more deep breath, holds it, and fires. At the click of the trigger, she lets out an inadvertent whine.

  “Excuse me?” Silver cocks an eyebrow.

  “What?” Carmen feigns ignorance.

  “You made a little noise.”

  “You’re hearing things.”

  “You know what I think?” Silver leans close and whispers in her ear. “You’re pretending otherwise, but I think you like me.” She spanks Carmen’s ass.

  Carmen wriggles free, shy and embarrassed. “You’re mental.” She starts walking toward the target, willing her cheeks not to redden again.

  “We’re more alike than you want to admit.” Silver catches up to her. “We’re kindred spirits.”

  “No, we’re not.” Carmen frowns. “Are you on drugs?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Silver says that so nonchalantly Carmen can’t tell whether or not she’s joking. The frown sticks, and she opens her mouth slightly, as if she’s about to ask a question that never quite materializes.

  When they reach the target, Silver finds Carmen’s second bullet hole on the very edge of the bullseye circle, so close to dead center.

  “You’re really good,” she concludes, nodding approvingly. “You can be my sidekick.”

  “I don’t want to be your sidekick.” Carmen shakes her head and hands back the gun, slightly apologetic. “Thanks for the lesson, but I already told you: I’m not going with you to Manchester.”

  “Come on,” Silver pleads. “Did you see what Honey gave me?”

  She grabs Carmen’s chin and turns her head toward Bold and Mason. Mason is using an arrow to clean out one of his ears, jamming the arrowhead much too far into his ear canal, contorting his face into an unusual pain-pleasure combination. Meanwhile, Bold is swatting so vigorously at a pestering fly, he falls off his chair.

  “They’re probably skilled in other areas.” Carmen doesn’t believe those words even as they’re coming out of her mouth.

  “I need someone who knows how to use firearms,” Silver cajoles her. “Someone who’s skilled enough to take a good shot if need be.”

  “Expecting a fight?”

  “Always.” Silver grins.

  She looks far too happy about the prospect of a bloodbath, and Carmen is starting to find the twinkle in her eyes somewhat unsettling.

  “All right, here’s the thing.” Carmen tries to force her to see reason. “These people”—she points at Bold and Mason—“aren’t warriors. They’re barely men. Going into the city with them is a suicide mission. They’ll get you all killed. Do you understand?”

  Silver shrugs. “I don’t need warriors; we’re not going up against an army. They’re a bunch of inbred pricks with guns, and I’ve battled Chimera with higher IQs than the whole lot of them put together.”

  “Chimera?” Carmen grimaces. “They’re extinct.”

  “Not where I’m from. I’ve been killing Chimera since I was five years old. I like killing things, and I’m good at it. I’m used to waking up every day and tearing those ugly, shit-eating monsters limb from limb, and if I don’t kill something again soon, I’m going to go insane. The only thing I’ve killed since I’ve been here is a badger, and he didn’t exactly put up a fight.”

  “Badgers can be vicious.”

  “Not this one. He was drunk.”

  Carmen looks at her sideways. “Are you sure it was the badger?”

  Silver ignores that.

  “Don’t make me beg, Carmen.” She clasps her hands together.

  “I don’t want you to beg. I’m starting to think there might actually be something mentally wrong with you, and I’m not sure I’d feel safe spending three days with you, stuck out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s just the hormones.”

  “Hormones?”

  Silver nods. “I’m pregnant. I’m not allowed to have anything I like, I haven’t had sex in a week, the girl with the purple hair’s been pissing me off, and the only shining light I can find at the end of this dark, awful tunnel is the fact that I might get to beat the shit out of some gangsters soon.”

  Carmen didn’t hear anything after the word ‘pregnant’.

  “You’re pregnant?! What the shit? Should you be doing any of this?”

  “Don’t you start. Listen”—Silver takes her by the shoulders—“you help me get their Delta back, and I’ll go with you to London. Sound fair?”

  “What makes you think I want you to go to London with me?”

  Silver shrugs. “You don’t want to travel alone.”

  “How do you know? You don�
�t know me.”

  “I know it ‘cause your cast came off days ago and yet you’re still here.”

  She knows she’s got Carmen in a corner.

  “Ready?” She pats her reluctant partner’s back.

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The journey from D10 to Manchester by horse takes one and a half days, and Silver spends most of the first day glaring at Linx. Somehow, despite Silver’s protests, she’d managed to worm her way into the group by pleading to Alex that her highly sensitive nose might be useful to them.

  Yeah, right.

  With her father gone for a month, there’s no-one to rein her in. Silver feels as though they’re carrying around a coiled spring that could go off at any moment, and she hates that Alex relented so easily. For whatever reason, his judgment seems clouded, and it doesn’t bode well. Linx has been clinging to him like a leech thus far, and Silver’s about ready to drown her in a lake.

  To make things worse, Luka’s been spending much of the ride up front with Bold and Mason, so she hasn’t even had her best friend to talk to. Thank fuck for Carmen, whose company provides some small respite from the murderous thoughts in her head while they ride together at the back of the pack on the morning of day two.

  “So why do you want to go to London?” Carmen wraps the reins around the horn on the pommel of her saddle and stretches her arms, yawning.

  “Sightseeing.” Silver puts no effort into making that sound like the truth.

  “Don’t lie.” Carmen plants her hands on her hips, trying to strike a defiant pose, despite straddling a massive beast. “If we’re going to be travel buddies, one of the rules has to be that you won’t lie to me. Or smother me in my sleep.”

  Her horse starts to veer to the left, having spotted some tasty looking flowers.

  “I might have some business to take care of there.” Silver remains frustratingly vague. “I haven’t quite decided yet.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Carmen’s suspicions are raised. “What kind of business? Is it illegal?” She takes up the reins and steers her mare back on course.

  “It’s private.”

  That doesn’t make Carmen feel any better about the prospect of their trip. “I don’t think people in a questionable state of mental health should be allowed to have secrets from their partners.”

  “Oh, so we’re partners now?” Silver teases her. “I thought you didn’t wanna be my sidekick.”

  “I’m not your sidekick.” Carmen points a finger of warning at her. “I’m your partner, and I deserve to know what’s going on inside your head.”

  “Trust me, you don’t wanna know what’s going on inside my head.” She fantasizes about killing Linx again.

  “It couldn’t be any more terrifying than following you blindly.” Carmen reaches for a water canteen clipped onto her saddlebag and takes a sip. “You could be leading me to my death for all I know. This is a terrible idea. These morons”—she shakes her canteen at Bold and Mason—“don’t have your experience, and neither do I. We’re not soldiers like you.”

  “I was more than a soldier.” Silver fingers her dog tags absently. “I ran the army.”

  After a second of hesitation, Carmen starts laughing heartily.

  “What?” Silver’s affronted. “What’s so funny?”

  “This must be quite the come down for you. You used to lead an army, and now you’re stuck with the lot of us.” A tear of laughter falls.

  Silver doesn’t see the funny side.

  “Laugh it up.” She gazes off into the distance, her mind wandering.

  Detecting real sadness in Silver’s eyes, Carmen quiets down. An hour goes by, then she flops forward on her horse, pretending to die of boredom.

  “Are we nearly there yet?”

  Passing through the deserted town of Sale, now overrun by trees and moss, Silver reckons so. Bold was pretty specific about the directions: follow the path of the abandoned railway line all the way to Manchester. Most of the journey is to be undertaken on horseback, but since they can’t risk taking their horses into the city, for fear of having them stolen, they’ll be stabling them in some old farmland on the outskirts of another ghost town—Stretford—which they must be close to.

  “Almost.” Silver sighs.

  “What smells so bad?” Carmen pinches her nose. “Did one of these horses fart?” She looks over at Silver. “Did you fart?”

  “If any living creature generated a smell that bad, they’d have severe intestinal problems.” Silver draws Carmen’s attention to a disused canal running alongside the train tracks. “It’s stagnant water.”

  “Yuck.”

  Carmen tries to zip her jacket up and pull it over her mouth and nose so that she doesn’t have to breathe it in, but her jacket won’t quite reach. In the end, she has to raise her shoulders and scrunch her neck down, tilting her head forward. She looks like a turtle wedged in its shell.

  Unfortunately, they’re going to be stuck with the canal—and the stench—for a little while longer. Opposite a lake and a small wooded area, the farmland backs onto the far side of the canal, tucked into a small parcel of land beside a bend in the Mersey River.

  The Deltas have used this place as a pit stop many times before, and they’ve built a crude bridge over the canal in order to reach it. Made out of tree trunks—roped together, with a piece of sheet metal bolted on top—the bridge makes the horses nervous and uneasy. At Bold’s instruction, they all dismount.

  Carmen is the last one to hit the ground. “Why are we stopping?”

  “We walk from here.” Silver coaxes Fitch over the bridge. “According to Bold, it’s a little over an hour to Manchester on foot.”

  “Oh, goody,” Carmen under-enthuses.

  Bold and Mason see to the stabling of the horses in one of the barns, and make sure they have a ready supply of hay and water. In under fifteen minutes, they’re ready to hit the train tracks again.

  “Wait.” Carmen holds up her hand. “I have to pee first.”

  “Thanks for announcing it.” Silver feels a tingle in her own bladder, as if the need to urinate is contagious by suggestion. “Now I need to go, too.”

  Linx grunts and plonks herself down on a tree trunk, muttering under her breath: “Fucking pregnant women.”

  Linx’s syntax hits Silver’s ear and makes an impression. Pregnant women? Plural? Whatever the case, Carmen makes no comment, so she lets it go.

  The walk from Stretford to Manchester passes relatively quickly. Silver threatens to push Carmen in the canal twice before the tracks veer off eastwardly while the path of the canal runs further north, and Carmen squeals like a little girl both times.

  Linx continues to press her lips against Alex’s butt cheeks, offering up a variety of cringeworthy chat-up gems like “My dad says you’re an engineer. Does that mean you’re really good with your hands?”, which eventually causes Silver to throw up over the edge of the railway viaduct at the southern border of Manchester city.

  “This wouldn’t happen if you’d stayed a Taint.” Carmen holds Silver’s ponytail back. “The side-effects of pregnancy are greatly diminished when the virus is active.”

  “Bullshit.” Silver hangs her head over the railing. “I puked plenty before I was wiped.”

  “That’s obviously an exaggeration. You might upchuck once or twice, if there are other triggers like nerves or anxiety, but by and large, the nausea seldom results in the loss of one’s stomach contents.”

  “How do you know that?” Silver squints at her in the sunlight.

  “Common knowledge.” Carmen passes her a canteen of water. “Why did you want to be wiped anyway?”

  “I wanted to feel like me again.”

  “And how’s that been working out for you?”

  “Stir your stumps!” Bold calls to them from further down the tracks. “We’re here!”

  Carmen and Silver catch up to them on top of an old multi-storey parking lot that onc
e served commuters on the railway line. Crouching in a row behind the safety railing, Mason gets out a pair of binoculars and hands them down the line to Silver.

  “Point out where he had you.”

  Peering through binoculars at the city, Silver quickly identifies the Great Northern Warehouse they were taken to, and the parking garage they emerged beneath.

  “Tomkin’s being held under the warehouse—the tunnel entrance is down an old elevator shaft—but that place will crawling with Slade’s men.” She chews it over in her mind. “We need to find another way in.”

  Linx, appearing not to hear any of that, leaps up and heads for the stairwell. “Let’s get closer and check it out.”

  Infuriated, Silver grabs her by the hair and pulls her roughly onto the ground. “We go when I say we go.” She bears down over Linx’s chest. “I don’t have the time to deal with any weak links.” She enunciates the last two words pointedly.

  She half expects Alex to tear her off and come to Linx’s defense, but he doesn’t. So not all of his brain cells have completely turned to mush. Yet.

  “Them tunnels you say you was in …” Bold wracks his brain for information. “Did it look like thems was part of an old canal?”

  Silver shrugs. “They could’ve been. Why?”

  “I think I knows where there’s a back door.”

  With no other competing plans to argue over, they follow Bold further down another set of railway tracks until they reach Manchester Oxford Road railway station. Now derelict, the entire roof has fallen in and there’s shattered glass everywhere. Almost everything in the interior was crushed when the roof collapsed, except for a few reinforced support walls. One of these walls has a doorway that leads down below, into an old maintenance area and some staff break rooms.

  “I was scavenging for scrap metal when I found this.” Bold heaves the door open. “There’s a tunnel down here what used to be an old pedestrian footpath. It was blocked in donkey’s years ago, but someone bashed it through again.”

  Silver, pocket-sized flashlight in hand, follows him down a flight of crooked, worn steps. “How do you know it goes to Slade’s warehouse?”

  “I don’t, but it must go somewhere.”