No. Not a butcher’s. “A freezing works,” she whispered to herself. She looked at the Carpenter. “There’s a few old meat works up north. Most of them have been shuttered for years.”
“Just the place for the budding psychopath and his victim,” the Carpenter said while he wandered towards the window. “Still a lot of ground to cover.”
“You afraid of some old-fashioned footwork?” she said. She turned back to John, crossed her arms and leaned against the table. “Thanks for this.”
He ventured a small smile. “My pa was a reporter too, for a little local rag. Stories about local council members and the effects of the recent downpour on the local livestock, that sort of thing. But one day he got a tour of the Light Brigade’s Sun-base, and an interview with Kingfisher. He said it was the proudest moment of his career.”
She made a noncommittal noise. She didn’t want to tell him how distant those days were. “What did Quanta want with you anyway?”
“He wanted me to write a story about him.”
He did seem to like the limelight. “What’d he want you to say?”
“He’s dying. A brain tumour. But before he dies, he wants to make the world understand why he did all this. He’s insane. He’s hung up on the woman he murdered, his lover. He blames the world for turning her against him. I think he thinks he’s some kind of avenging god.”
She opened her mouth, but the Carpenter cut her off before she could speak. “Time to go, mate.” He turned away from the window. “Now.”
“Met Div’s here already?” She checked her watch. Bloody public servants. “How long have they been here?”
“Dunno. The cars are there but no one’s in ’em.”
Ah, hell.
“Hey, wait!” the reporter said, his voice rising. He pointed at the unconscious copper. “What about him?”
The Carpenter grabbed her by the arm and hauled her towards the door.
“If you can, give us thirty seconds to get out,” she said. “Then press the button to call the nurse. Tell them what you have to tell them.” She paused. “But if you can, keep the thing about Doll Face quiet. Met Div’s out of their depth here. If they go chasing him, a lot of coppers are going to die.”
He nodded and got back into bed. “I think I was asleep the whole time. I didn’t see or hear a thing.”
Solomon stuck his head out the door and nodded at her.
“See you round,” he said to John.
They ducked out the door, pulling off their masks as they went. She shoved the wig back on her head and they strolled quickly towards the lift bank. A pretty young nurse smiled at them, but they didn’t stop to chat.
Solomon pointed at the numbers lighting up above the lift doors. One of them was steadily approaching their floor. Heart thumping, she opened the door to the stairwell and ducked inside, Solomon close behind. She just got the door closed when the elevator bell rang and the doors slid open. She watched through the window as three uniformed officers came out and marched down the hallway towards John’s room.
Wiping the sweat and makeup from her forehead, she allowed herself to breathe. The Carpenter grinned at her from beneath his false beard.
“Road trip?”
24: A Drop of Blood
The Carpenter
Real name:
Solomon Doherty
Powers:
Telekinetic control of wood, limited communication with plants.
Notes:
One of the founding members of the Wardens. Relatively famous even overseas, but always preferred to stay out of the public eye. Instrumental in the defeat of the Nagasaki Horrors. His teammate Battle Jack once said in an interview: “Didn’t matter how many pricks were trying to kill you, didn’t matter how shit things got. You could always look back and see the Carpenter standing like a kauri tree in a thunder storm. If you had him at your back, you weren’t going down. No way.”
—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0165]
Niobe went into the petrol station to get a pack of smokes while Solomon filled up. It was an independent station, not one of the big chains, and it showed. The guy behind the counter looked like he’d had every bone in his face broken at some point, and he had a zit on his cheek that was ready to blow. She put a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola, two mince and cheese pies, and some potato chips on the counter. The Carpenter had picked the wrong place to stop if he wanted fresh fruit.
“Give me a pack of Pall Mall twenties,” she said, fishing some cash out of her pocket. The guy sniffed and limped away to the cigarette cabinet.
The Coke would be a godsend. They needed the caffeine. It was morning, 8:27 a.m. according to the clock hanging behind the counter, a good twenty hours after they’d left the hospital. Twenty bloody hours of searching. Well, they caught a few winks in the car when they quit at two in the morning. The sun came up at six, which put paid to any ideas they had about sleeping in. She’d tried to call Frank Oppenheimer before they left, but there was no one home. They had to do this alone.
The station attendant threw the packet of cigarettes onto the counter and sniffed again. “You paying for the petrol as well?”
“Yeah.” She handed him the cash, and he rang it up. She’d abandoned the wig. No amount of secrecy was worth the itch.
She pocketed the smokes, slung the fizzy drink and food under her arm, and walked out. The morning was cool and cloudless, so bright it stung her eyes even through the sunglasses. She tossed the supplies into the car and got in next to the Carpenter. He was starting to smell pretty ripe. She knew she needed a shower as well. But this wasn’t exactly the sort of place to find motels, not anymore. Plenty of bushes if you wanted to take a piss, though.
The Carpenter was poring over a map, stroking his stubble. He’d given up the false beard. The map was covered in pencil scratchings, mostly circles with crosses through them.
“How many we got left?” she said as she ripped open a bag of chips and offered him some.
“Three.” He pointed them out on the map, then took a handful of chips. “What if we’re wrong?”
She pushed her sunglasses out of the way and rubbed her eyes. That wasn’t something she could think about now. Getting Sam back was the one thing she was clinging to, the one thing in her life that still had meaning. She shoved a couple of chips in her mouth, but she could barely taste them. “Start the damn car.”
They rolled down the narrow roads, spewing dust into the air behind them. The roads were unsealed and bumpy as hell. The country was wild here, mostly farmland reclaimed by Mother Nature when the farmers left. A few towns still hung on, more like villages now. The petrol station they’d stopped at was the last one for miles. Occasionally, a car or ute would come winding along the road towards them, but for the most part the only vehicles they saw were rusted tractors and the odd motorcycle. A few miles to the east, the sun would be climbing above the South Pacific, but she couldn’t see the ocean through the hills and trees.
They were thirsty by the time they got through the first packet of chips, so they took turns swigging the Coke. It cleared the spiders from her mind, at least for the moment.
The first meat works they hit that day was another dud. It was much too close to the nearest village for any feasible use as an airship landing field, and half the roof had caved in. They got out and circled it half-heartedly, but it was clear this wasn’t the place. The Carpenter scratched it off on the map and they went on their way.
While he drove, Niobe checked her gun and belt for the twentieth time, taking stock of her armoury. Six rounds of live ammo and six stun rounds in the modified revolver, and another thirty-six of each in her belt. Gabby’s shield-breaker rounds were in the glove compartment, but they wouldn’t be any use against Doll Face. Four smoke pellets. A mini-stunner capable of delivering several thousand volts, but it required physical contact. If Doll Face got that close to her, she didn’t rate her chances. Might be useful if any more of Quanta’s minions were lurking around, though.
She had a handful of other non-combat items: torch, modified lenses for her goggles, miniature first aid kit, plastic cuffs, a thin but high tensile strength rope. She might as well be going into battle naked.
“Say we find Doll Face,” she said, breaking the silence. “What’s the plan? We can’t go calling Met Div in on this one.” Doll Face would see the flashing lights coming a mile away, and she didn’t fancy cleaning copper blood off her hands.
He shook his head. “This is our fight. We should’ve taken him down years ago, back when we still had the numbers. But he moved around so fast, going to ground straight after one massacre and then popping up on the other side of the world. And the supergroups were too reactionary, waiting for something to happen instead of tracking him down.”
“There were other things to worry about,” she said. “The Nagasaki Horrors in your time, the Syndicate in mine.”
“We’re paying the price now. But we’ll learn from this. We’ll do better next time.”
She frowned and checked the charge generator on her gun. “There’s not going to be a next time. We’re it. The last bloody superteam.”
He just smiled. Fine, let him have his fantasies. Let him dream of a world where people still need heroes. They both knew what they were going into, chasing Doll Face like this. If they had to die, at least one of them could leave a smiling corpse.
Solomon spotted the dust-caked sign on the side of the road and pointed it out to her. Schuster Meat Solutions. He slowed and took the bend in the road. The building emerged from behind a hill. As soon as she saw it, she knew this was the place.
The smile on Solomon’s face faded, replaced by a look of hardened determination. Without exchanging a word, he pulled over in the shelter of a small copse of trees. They pulled on their costumes. If she’d been religious, she would’ve said a prayer, but instead she just checked her gun once more. Live rounds armed. With Doll Face, there’d be no second chances.
They crept up a small mound, crawling as they approached the top to avoid making silhouettes against the skyline. The freezing works was a brick building topped by two side-by-side slanting roofs. It sat in the centre of a wide basin, with overgrown roads leading up to both ends. Once, it would’ve been a big operation, probably supplying most of the jobs of some nearby town long since abandoned. From her position atop the hill, she could make out native forest reclaiming the surrounding farmland and a few sheep still managing to scratch out a life on the land. The air was still, silent. No birds sung. Goose bumps crept along her arms.
There was no sign of Quanta’s airship. If the cloaking was as good as the reporter said, they’d have a hell of a time finding it. But that didn’t matter. It was the bodies that marked Schuster Meat Solutions as Doll Face’s new home.
Doll Face had skinned the three bodies from the neck down. Their muscles had gone dry and brown in the sun. Pools of dried blood stained the concrete beneath them. They dangled near the entrance, strung up on long ropes by hooks that pierced their arms and legs.
“Like puppets,” she whispered. She swallowed back bile.
Solomon’s eyes were closed behind his mask. His hand had gone to the pouch on the right side of his belt. She knew it held a small silver cross his wife had given him. She’d only seen him do this once before. The day the Syndicate had left Battle Jack’s severed head outside the Wardens’ headquarters.
Niobe gripped her gun so hard her fingers ached. She looked up at the sky. Why did they always have to do this in the daytime? She laid her free hand on Solomon’s shoulder, and he opened his eyes. Without a word, he slipped the hatchet from the loop in his belt. With the quarterstaff in one hand and the axe in the other, he didn’t look so much like a peaceful farmer.
Without speaking, they slipped from their cover and made their way silently down the hill. Aside from a low wooden fence, there was no cover, no way to approach unseen. Two dozen boarded-up windows covered the side of the freezing works. There’s no eyes in those windows, she tried to convince herself every time she thought she saw a flash of movement.
The air became a wall of buzzing flies as she approached the bodies. She pushed through them, grateful that her mask kept them from crawling into her ears and nose. Still, that didn’t block out the stench of rotting flesh. The bodies were peppered with wriggling maggots. Her stomach rebelled, but she swallowed down the nausea before it could overtake her. You can’t afford to lose it.
With all her strength, she forced her eyes upwards to look at the faces of the dead. Doll Face had left the skin there intact, but the eyes had been replaced by staring plastic with grotesque false eyelashes glued to them. It took her a moment to notice that lines of stitching ran around the tops of each of their heads, like they’d been scalped and then sewed up again. She knew one of the faces. He’d been on the front page of the paper yesterday morning. One of the small-time meta criminals that had broken out of prison a couple of days ago. Somehow, she didn’t think this was how he intended to spend his freedom.
Through the cloud of flies, she signalled to the Carpenter. He nodded, flies crawling across his unprotected chin, then carefully ducked under one of the bodies to reach the freezing works’ brick wall. She followed, suppressing the urge to shudder when she got a close look at the hooks that pierced the dead prisoners’ tendons.
They pressed against the wall on opposite sides of the wooden doors. She peered through one of the cracks in the battered wood, eyes straining, but even with her contrast turned up, she couldn’t see any movement. She blinked the sweat out of her eyes and glanced at the Carpenter.
“Do it,” she said.
He thrust his arms out, eyes pulsing with light. The doors flew off their hinges, blown inwards. Before the first crash, she was moving, her gun leading the way.
A tiny flash of movement was the only warning she got. Fear hit her faster than logical thought. She dived into shadow. It saved her life. The three circular blades embedded themselves in the door frame with a sickening crunch, right where she’d been standing.
She released the shadow. She brought her gun up, squeezed the trigger twice. Her rounds pinged against something metallic. An eerie giggle shrieked in response. She ducked behind a rusted conveyor system as another pair of blades came flying at her. Jesus Christ.
The Carpenter threw himself in beside her as another spinning blade soared past, taking a slice out of his hat. Panting, he pushed himself up against the machine. “I’m starting to think the element of surprise is overrated.”
A figure moved on the far side of the room. She squeezed off another two shots and ducked back as a blade answered. Doll Face giggled louder. “Doll Face has a new plaything!” The high-pitched voice echoed through the meat works. “It will be pretty like the others once it cuts off its own skin.”
Every hair on her body stood on end. Her mouth had gone dry. The stench in here was even worse than outside. She crept along the side of the conveyor, licking her lips. “Sam!” she called out. “We’ve come to get you out. If you can hear me, stay down.”
Another wave of giggles rolled across the room. “It’s a funny one, yes it is. Did the boy hear that? Maybe Doll Face will string the boy up with the others and make it dance for the funny one. Or maybe Doll Face will skin the boy himself. Hmmm, yes.” A muffled groan came from somewhere behind him.
“Shit,” she whispered to herself while she broke open the revolver and slipped in some fresh rounds. “Carpenter.” He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. “Hey, Carpenter.”
“Mate.” He pointed up, and she followed his finger.
“Oh, fuck,” she said.
More than a dozen bodies hung by their feet from the ceiling. The meat hooks went through their ankles and left their arms pointing towards the floor. She could make out rivers of dried blood on their fingers. The ones closest to the door were naked and skinned like the ones outside, while the ones further back were still dressed.
One of the bodies twitched. Her breath c
aught. It had a plastic mask stitched to its face, but she recognised the build and the blue uniform. Daniel O’Connor, the Met Div officer who’d captured Sam. A long, agonised groan came from him as he dangled, blood matting his hair. Oh God, he’s still alive.
“Help…” O’Connor said in a rasp, his voice muffled by the mask. “P…please….”
Jesus. She’d hated the man since she saw him in the Blind Man’s vision, but no one deserved this. She raised herself up an inch to reach for him, but another pair of blades flew at her, forcing her back down. He was too far away.
“Carpenter, can you get to him?”
Doll Face’s giggle rippled through the room.
“Not a chance,” the Carpenter said.
A scream tore through the room. Niobe’s attention snapped back to O’Connor. He was moving. His muscled arms jerked up and down. Was he trying to pull free? No. There were strings in his arms, like the bodies outside. The ropes went up to little pulleys set in the ceiling, then disappeared into the back of the meat works. Doll Face was putting on a puppet show for them. O’Connor’s tortured screams grew louder.
One by one, the bodies began to dance. Clumps of coagulated blood shook loose and rained down on her as she huddled for cover. One chunk landed on her knee. She slapped it away and forced herself to keep her eyes open. Closing them was death. More pulleys started grinding, and the bodies slowly dropped to eye level, never stopping their inverted, macabre dance.
Niobe blocked out the sound of O’Connor’s screams. To get him down they had to take out Doll Face. The Carpenter had his sleeve across his mouth. He glanced through a space in the conveyor. “Can you see the kid?”
She took a look herself, trying to get a clear view through the darkness and the bodies. Shafts of light slanted in through cracks in the boarded-up windows, but all they illuminated was flies and dust. “Hang on.”
She sucked in a lungful of air and drew the shadow around her. The rusted surfaces of the benches were thrown into high contrast, and she could sense the slick layer of blood that coated the concrete floor. The dancing bodies turned everything into a confused mess of movement. At least the screams were dulled. She darted across the floor, trying to get closer. Rows of conveyors and benches filled the space between her and Doll Face. On the far wall she could just make out a set of open doors, probably leading to the cold storage area. A figure was dragging something out of there. No. Someone.
Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel Page 27
