by Mark Morris
The policeman wished her a safe journey and she continued on her way. Thirty seconds later Bedford Square came into sight, and her car parked on a meter on the far side of it. Cassie looked left to right, unnerved by the quiet, by the faint but persistent sirens, by the megaphone message, snatches of which she could still hear when the breeze was drifting in her direction.
She crossed to her car, unlocked it, and got in. Only when she had closed and locked the door did she realize she had been holding her breath. She released it slowly, and wondered whether she would see Hellboy again. She hoped so, but both times they’d met up today they had been interrupted before getting to the stage where they might have exchanged addresses or phone numbers. She knew he< was staying at the Old Bloomsbury, and he knew where she worked, so hopefully they would manage to hook up. Although now that the shit had well and truly hit the fan, she guessed that his time in the UK would be at a premium.
The rap of knuckles on the driver’s-side window made her jump out of her skin. Heart pounding, she turned to see the man in the gray anorak smiling and waving apologetically. He was a nondescript little man — around fifty, with watery eyes, a scrubby moustache, and thinning hair the color of dust. Cassie wound down her window.
“Hello?” she said.
“Sorry to startle you, miss,” said the man, “but I couldn’t help overhearing you telling the officer you were going to Camden?”
His voice was weedy and nasal, to match his appearance.”That’s right,” said Cassie.
“In that case, and I know this is a terrible imposition, but is there any chance at all that you could give me a lift? I live on Bay-ham Street, y’see, and my wife will be worried about me, I know she will.”
Can’t you ring her? Cassie thought, and immediately felt ashamed of herself.
Although under normal circumstances she would never have countenanced giving a lift to a stranger, she couldn’t abandon the poor guy in the middle of the city. Forcing a smile, she said, “Sure, hop in.”
He smiled ingratiatingly, hunching his shoulders like a vulture, then scuttled around to the passenger door and pulled it open. He eased himself into the seat beside Cassie.
“I really am most grateful,” he said.
“No problem,” said Cassie, and reached for the ignition key.
As she did so, the man took a syringe from his overcoat pocket, stuck it in her arm, and depressed the plunger.
It happened so quickly that Cassie couldn’t even begin to react. It wasn’t until the man had pulled the syringe out of her arm and dropped it back into his pocket that she turned to him, startled.
“What did you — “ she began, but then the world blurred and receded from her. Cassie was vaguely aware of her body slipping sideways and of being unable to do a thing about it. The last thing she saw before cloying darkness closed over her was the man’s grinning, skull-like face.
Chapter 12
“I oughta get a clothing allowance,” Hellboy growled, brushing at the spatters of gloopy black ichor on his duster. Even so, he was grinning as he emerged from the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road.
“Is it dead?” asked a young and very nervous soldier, peering around Hellboy and into the gloom of the entrance foyer.
“As a doornail,” Hellboy said, “though that doesn’t mean some of the pieces aren’t still twitching.”
It was almost six p.m. and dusk was descending on London’s unnaturally quiet streets. Assigned to an army unit comprised of four jeeps and two dozen armed soldiers, Hellboy had spent the last few hours on a monster-fighting tour of London. In Covent Garden he had done battle with a big hairy insect thing that had a face like a steel bear trap and more legs than he could count; close to the Sadler’s Wells theater in Islington he had had a gargantuan scrap with a trio of savage little green bastards who looked like turtles crossed with scorpions; on a Kilburn housing estate he had fought something that resembled a giant pulsating mass of purple porridge from which — through blowholes in its lumpy hide — extended sinewy tendrils tipped by viciously snapping beaks.
His body had taken a hell of a beating. He had been stung and stabbed and bitten, as well as battered to kingdom come and back, but there was no denying that he was in his element. Despite a few hairy moments, he had emerged from each encounter victorious. He was covered in blood (thankfully very little of his own), or what passed for blood amongst the varied collection of other-dimensional creatures he had engaged in combat, and he stank like an abattoir.
Someone tossed him a towel and he used it to wipe his hands and face, and to remove as much of the gunk from his coat as he could.
“Right,” he said, “what’s next on the list?”
Captain Kneale, who was in charge of the troops accompanying Hellboy, unrolled a large map of London on the bonnet of one of the jeeps, in what had now become something of a post-battle ritual. The map was marked by red circles where the various emergent creatures had been spotted. Wherever possible, the army or police were destroying the creatures, or at the very least keeping them contained until either Hellboy or his colleagues could arrive to deal with them. Each time a creature was destroyed the red circle denoting it was overlaid with a black cross. So far around half the circles had been crossed out, though the extermination — referred to by the British military as Operation Hellfire — had not been achieved without casualties. Official figures currently stood at fifty-one civilians, seventeen army personnel, and six police officers dead, with many more injured, some seriously.
Kneale jabbed a finger at the map.”Goldhawk Road’s our next port of call, just south of here.”
“What we got there?” Hellboy asked.
“Wilkins?” Kneale barked at a private who was holding an open dossier in his hands.
“Snakelike creature, sir. Black, segmented, approximately fifteen feet long. According to eyewitness reports, it has four heads and a pincer on its tail. And it spits a sort of green fire, sir.”
Hellboy grinned in anticipation. “What are we waiting for?”
The troops began to climb back into their jeeps. Hellboy was walking towards his when his attention was caught by something on the opposite side of the street. A bank of TVs which had been left on in the window of a locked-up electrical-goods shop were all showing the same image. Next to the BBC News logo, a headline in white on a red banner across the top of the screen proclaimed LONDON IN CRISIS. Beneath this was grainy camcorder footage of a man trying to protect a little girl from a winged monstrosity that was flapping above them.
It was the man who had attracted Hellboy’s attention. Hellboy had taken one look at his stricken face, and even given the distance and the mediocre quality of the picture, had recognized him instantly. He watched grimly as Colin Proctor was picked up by the winged creature and borne like a mouse in an eagle’s talons towards a vertical black fissure that seemed to hang impossibly in midair. He watched Proctor release the child he was holding a split second before the fissure swallowed him. It was only when the picture cut back to a somber-faced newsreader that Hellboy realized Captain Kneale was standing at his shoulder, looking at him quizzically.
“I knew that guy,” Hellboy muttered by way of explanation.
Kneale’s face rearranged itself into an expression of sympathy. “Friend of yours?”
Hellboy grunted. “I wouldn’t say that. In fact, the guy was a pain in the butt, to tell you the truth. Even so, nobody deserves to die like that. And that little girl saw the whole thing.” His face seemed to tighten. “Come on, we got work to do.”
He stalked back across the road and climbed into the passenger side of his assigned jeep. His driver turned on the engine in readiness to move out when Lance-Corporal Jeffers, the communications officer, opened the passenger door of a jeep further up the queue and stuck out his head, which was enclosed by a pair of headphones.
“Sir!”
Kneale paused in the act of stepping up into his own jeep. “Yes, Jeffers, what is it?”
“Phone call for Hellboy, sir. It’s been relayed from his hotel. Apparently it’s urgent.”
“I got it,” Hellboy said, climbing out and walking across.
Jeffers removed his headphones and handed them to Hellboy. Hellboy had to adjust the headband to its fullest extent to get them over his head, and even then it was a tight fit.
“Hellboy,” he said into the attached microphone.
“I’ll make this very simple,” said a clipped, arrogant voice. “Either you and your colleagues cease this investigation and leave the country tonight or your new lady friend, Cassie Saunders, dies.”
Hellboy blinked. This he hadn’t been expecting. “Who the hell is this?” he snarled.
“Don’t be tiresome,” said the voice. “Do you honestly expect me to answer that? I have said all that I intend to say. Goodbye.”
“Hey, wait!” Hellboy shouted. “How do I know you’re not bluffing?”
There was an exaggerated sigh from the other end of the line, followed by a brief pause. Then a small, scared voice said, “Hellboy? Is that you?”
“Cassie!” Hellboy shouted. “Where are you?”
“I don’t know. I’m — “
The line went dead.
Hellboy glared at Jeffers, who quailed before his anger. “What happened?” he roared.
“The caller must have put the phone down, sir,” Jeffers replied.
“Can you trace it?”
“I’m afraid not. As I say it was relayed from the hotel and — “
“Damn!” Hellboy yelled. He punched the side of the jeep, denting it. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
Jeffers and the driver looked at him in alarm. There was silence from the other jeeps too. Even Kneale seemed reticent to speak in the face of Hellboy’s wrath.
Hellboy turned away briefly, breathing hard, trying to bring his fury under control. After a few seconds he turned back, stalked towards his assigned jeep, and climbed in.
“Let’s go,” he muttered.
———
An hour earlier, Liz had arrived at the King’s Cross refuge with Duggie, wearing a long shabby overcoat and balaclava. The clothes had been procured from a charity shop on Euston Road, though only after Liz had persuaded the cowering staff inside to open up by showing them her B.P.R.D. ID card. She had told them she needed the clothes for a top-secret mission, and had had to fend off questions about when things would be back to normal.
.”Hellboy will sort this out, though, won’t he?” one of the girls asked her desperately.
“He’ll do his damnedest,” said Liz. “Now, don’t forget to lock up after me.”
She met Duggie outside the entrance to an eerily deserted King’s Cross station, having walked the mile or so from Regent’s Park, where she had said goodbye to Abe. Even over that short distance she had been stopped and questioned three times by police patrols, but after a quick flash of her ID she had been allowed to proceed. Despite the occasionally abrasive relationship which she, Hellboy, and Abe had had with the British authorities, Liz had to admit that their handling of the current situation had been swift and thorough. London had been locked down with commendable efficiency, its transport services suspended, its streets cleared. It was weird seeing the city so deserted, and weirder still to think that every building she passed was packed with people, despite outward appearances. Hotels, cafes, pubs, restaurants, theaters, department stores, office blocks... all were currently refuges for London’s displaced population. No doubt some had made it home, but many more had simply sought sanctuary where they could, and were now waiting, tense and silent, for the all clear, just like their parents and grandparents must have done decades before during the Nazi bombing raids.
The windows of many buildings had been blinded — some with steel shutters, some with curtains, some merely with sheets of paper — to conceal the inhabitants from view. Those buildings whose frontages were almost all glass — department stores, restaurants, coffee shops — often had interior barricades of stacked furniture and boxes to provide an extra layer of protection. Now and then Liz saw wide, fearful eyes peeping out at her. Sometimes she heard noises — muffled sounds of movement; even, in one instance, voices raised in furious argument. But for the most part there was silence. And with no one left on the traffic-choked streets to obstruct the progress of emergency vehicles, even the overlapping blare of sirens had been stilled.
Liz didn’t see Duggie until he detached himself from the gloomy corner created by the station entrance and the WHSmith store which jutted out to the right of it. It was almost five p.m., but already the graininess of approaching dusk was in the air, and shadows were blooming and darkening in the city’s numerous nooks and crannies.
“Hey, Duggie,” Liz said, “how you doin’?”
Duggie’s eyes flickered around. He clearly felt exposed and vulnerable out in the open. “Okay,” he said, “but I don’t like this. It’s weird.”
“Isn’t it?” said Liz. “How far’s the refuge from here?”
“A couple of streets away. Less than five minutes’ walk.”
“In that case ...” Liz opened the white plastic bag which contained her purchases and pulled out the coat and balaclava. The coat was big and baggy and came down past her knees. She dragged the balaclava over her head, tugging strands of hair out from the sides to cover as much of her face as she could. She considered rubbing some dirt on her face as well, to further reduce the risk of being recognized, but then decided that that was overdoing things. Although Duggie was unshaven and had an overall look of bedded-in grime, he didn’t have streaks of dirt on his face like some kid playing a Victorian street urchin in a school play.
Hoping that merely keeping a low profile would be enough, she followed Duggie to the refuge. It was an unprepossessing red brick building tucked away down a grubby back street. It was hard to tell what the building’s function might originally have been. It could perhaps have been the premises of a small manufacturing company, or even a modest school. As Duggie knocked on the door, Liz hunched over, keeping her chin tucked into her chest. She was not as famous as Hellboy, but it was still possible she might be recognized, particularly if their enemies had been keeping tabs on them.
The door was opened by a thin man with black-rimmed spectacles and a blond beard. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing a light gray sweatshirt with a faded Oxford University logo on it, and baggy, frayed jeans.
“Hey, Duggie,” he said, as if he were genuinely delighted to see him.
Duggie nodded with rather less enthusiasm. His voice little more than a mumble, he said, “Can me and my friend come in?”
“Well, sure,” said the man. “We’re not turning anyone away today. But I’m afraid all the beds are taken. With what’s been going on outside, the last of them were snapped up by three this afternoon. We’ll be turning the dining hall into an extra dormitory after supper, though. You’re welcome to stay there, if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”
“No, that’ll be okay,” Duggie said, and slipped inside.
Liz shuffled after him, still hunched over. A hand was thrust into her vision. She looked down at it.
“Hi there,” said the voice of the man above her head, “and who might you be? I don’t think we’ve seen you before.”
“Annie,” Liz muttered, hoping her attempt at an English accent was not too much of a giveaway.
“Annie?” said the man. “Annie what?”
Liz shrugged.
Ahead of her she heard Duggie say, “Her name’s Annie Davis. She doesn’t say much. She’s shy.”
“Is that so?” said the man. “She a friend of yours, Duggie?”
Liz guessed that Duggie must have nodded, because after a pause the man asked, “How come she hasn’t come around here before?”
There was a longer pause this time. Then Duggie said,”She had somewhere, but the landlord kicked her out.”
Liz hoped that Duggie’s explanation didn’t sound as flimsy to t
he man as it did to her. Apparently not, because he said, “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, you’re welcome here, Annie. We might not be able to promise you a bed on this occasion, but at least you’ll get supper and a roof over your head.”
Liz nodded and shuffled after Duggie. However, the man was not yet finished with her.
“My name’s Alex Hipkiss, by the way. I run this place with my wife, Jess. You’ll be meeting her soon enough.”
When Liz failed to respond, he said, “So tell me what’s going on out there, Duggie? I’ve heard all sorts of stories — from wild animals to terrorists to monsters. What have you seen?”
Liz raised her head a fraction and chanced a peek at Duggie. He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” said Alex disbelievingly. “Are you telling me that none of the rumors are true?”
“Don’t know about that,” Duggie mumbled. “I just haven’t seen anything, that’s all.”
“Hmm,” said Alex, and turned to Liz, who instantly cast her eyes downwards once more. “What about you, Annie? Have you seen anything?”
Liz gave a brief shake of the head.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Alex good-humoredly, “maybe everyone’s making a big fuss for no reason, eh? Maybe it’s just mass hysteria. What do you think, Duggie?”
Duggie shrugged.
Alex sighed, evidently exasperated that his attempts to strike up a conversation were proving unsuccessful. The tone of his voice changed, became more businesslike. “Well, you know where everything is, Duggie. Perhaps you’d like to show Annie round? Supper will be at seven thirty, as always.”
Liz spent the next couple of hours getting to know the place, and trying to keep as low a profile as possible. There were three floors to the building, though Duggie told her that the top floor, which apparently consisted of two sizable attic rooms, was never used. The ground floor housed administration offices, a kitchen, a dining room, male and female toilets, and a medical room, all of which, aside from the dining room and toilets, were generally kept locked. On the second floor was a pair of dormitories (one for men, one for women), two bathrooms (ditto), a shower room, and a games room.
