“We can always stay here until the troops arrive,” Penny suggested and then stopped to look at the array of offensive (in all senses of the word) weaponry stored all around her. “Oh my.”
“We could do that,” I agreed without considering it for a second, “but there’s no telling how many other people would get killed in the process. We’re everyone’s best bet for dealing with this right now.”
“We are?” she asked, surprised. “Boy, is everyone screwed.”
“Now that’s not the right spirit,” I told her and regretted the inadvertent pun straight away. I located the weapon that I had been looking for on the shelves and my thumbprint and blood sample were enough to have it released to me. I then went to the armoury computer terminal and input my codes. “Computer, arm failsafe option - armoury,” I instructed it.
“Authorisation,” the computer demanded immediately.
“Ward alpha seven three bloody big bang,” I quoted.
“Confirmation,” the computer asked.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” Penny warned. She was looking at a display of closed circuit television screens displaying all the approaches to the armoury. The main approach was a long, straight corridor that ran from the loading dock to the armoury that allowed the larger items to be transported in without obstruction. Currently, the corridor was filled by the bulk of a large boar. The beast was large enough to almost completely fill it.
“Right on cue,” I approved.
“Confirmation,” the computer repeated.
“Kablooie,” I told it.
“Failsafe option armed,” the computer informed me blandly. Really, such a drastic option ought to come with a more portentous statement of intent.
I strapped the harness of the weapon that I had selected around my chest and hefted it with both hands. It was heavy and unwieldy, but then all really destructive weapons are. To Penny I said, “Right, now here’s the plan. You open the main door and then you slip out of the side door and head for the lobby again.”
“Or I can take another one of those and fight with you,” she suggested firmly.
“In other circumstances I’d be more than happy with that,” I told her, “but right now I need you to get to the troops and let them know what they’re up against in case this doesn’t work.”
“I don’t know what they’re up against,” she complained.
“Me neither, but we both know more than they do.”
“This is one of those ‘save the damsel in distress’ chivalry things isn’t it?”
“Whilst I agree you’re a damsel, I see no distress,” I pointed out. “And whenever have you seen me be chivalrous? Now is not the time to argue, Penny.”
Reluctantly, she went to the main entrance and opened the outer doors. I stationed myself in front of the secondary doors and activated the weapon in my hands. There was a disappointing thunk and then nothing.
“Ready?” she asked me.
“Not in the slightest,” I told her. “So let’s get on with it.”
She hit the door release and immediately took off toward the side door through which we had entered.
The internal security doors of the main entrance lumbered open and I stepped forward through the widening crack between them, outside of the armoury’s protective spells. No weapon could actually be fired inside the vault as the resulting explosion would probably remove Oxford permanently from the list of electoral wards. The boar at the far end of the corridor growled anxiously and pulled at its chain. I couldn’t see the disfigured woman beyond it, but that was because I couldn’t see anything at all beyond it. The chain was released and the boar surged forward with a speed that was born out of pure power.
I levelled the weapon I was carrying and fired. From the muzzle, a large metal bullet was launched. As soon as it cleared the end, it spread itself out into a mesh that grew quickly. The boar ran headlong into it and was enveloped as the edges of the mesh folded around it and met on the far side. Enveloped in the mesh, the boar stumbled and crashed to the floor, sliding a good distance under its momentum. The mesh wasn’t finished yet though and the ends began to contract, shrinking the net around the trapped beast. The fine wires first cut into and then through the beast’s tough hide and kept on going. The boar bellowed angrily and then in pain as the mesh shrank inexorably. It was a particularly nasty death and one that I wouldn’t have wished on anything that wasn’t planning to trample me to jelly beneath its hooves.
As the first boar was reduced to pork chops, the second stamped over its companion in its desire to get at me and quickly met the same bloody fate.
Now I was left face to faces with the disfigured woman. Neither side of that face was serene after examining the gory aftermath of her pets’ charge.
“All we need now is a barbecue and some apple sauce,” I taunted her over the pile of giblets that had so recently been terrifying monsters.
She screamed and the sound was definitely not human. The fact that she was floating above the ground and possessed glowing eyes had already given that game away, but the scream confirmed it anyhow. It was an inhuman mix of anger, disbelief and sorrow, all with a side order of confusion. I was guessing that this sort of thing didn’t happen to her very often.
I fired the net gun for the third time, but the apparition’s eyes glowed more intensely and the mesh melted in the air, falling to the ground as hot metal rain. There was only one thing left to do and that was to turn and run.
Again.
The fur-clad woman came after me with her keening cry still sounding. I ran right through the interior of the armoury to the side door that Penny had (hopefully) exited through. The rack of weapons to my right suddenly screeched as the metal structure was ripped out of the concrete of the floor. I leapt forward just as the whole structure crashed to the ground, taking the rack on the other side with it. An exoskeleton suit that boosted power, but reduced speed and reaction time smashed into the wall ahead of me with enough force to embed it into the bricks. The door ahead was suddenly torn out of the doorway, bringing part of the wall with it, and flew directly at me. I had no time to avoid it, so I went down on my arse and slid under it, some projecting steel reinforcing rods scraping my arm painfully.
The creature screamed again in frustration, but now I was out of the armoury I turned to face it. The move momentarily disconcerted the being. Human beings running away in terror was something that it clearly understood, but human beings standing their ground with a triumphant look on their faces was something that was obviously new to her.
“Computer, initiate failsafe protocol,” I ordered as her eyes started to blaze.
There was a rush of air that nearly dragged me back into the room and a loud popping sound.
Where the armoury had been a moment before was an empty space. The failsafe had transported the armoury and all its contents deep into the corona of the sun to be instantly vaporised.
“Well, I’m not explaining this one to Mrs Freidriksen,” Penny said behind me.
I turned around and the ground exploded under me.
People are not designed to fly without the aid of planes, helicopters or antigravity spells. I therefore travelled only a dozen feet or so through the air before I crashed heavily to the ground again. And this was real ground beneath me, not the carpet-tiled hallways of the Victor Von Frankenstein Tower. There were also no longer walls on either side of me.
Well, that’s not quite true; there were walls around me, but none of them were intact and very few of them stood more than a couple of feet high. Buildings all around were shattered and collapsed in on themselves and more than a few of them were on fire. There were heavy thumps and crashes sounding all around me, deadened by the ringing in my ears that drowned out most of it.
A figure stepped over me and across the glare of the sun so that all I could see was a silhouette. It was the silhouette of a soldier, complete with battle helmet, rifle and ill-fitting fatigues.
“I said are you hurt
?” the figure said dimly.
I tried to shake my head and rise, but found that I wasn’t able to do either very well. The soldier reached down and hoisted me up onto feet that didn’t seem to want to face the same way. My legs trembled and threatened to spill me back onto the ground, but with the soldier’s help I was able to stay upright.
“We need to get out of here,” my saviour muttered and pointed toward a group of walls that were slightly more complete than all the rest.
I nodded and tried to move in that direction. The soldier supported me and we made slow progress between the shattered buildings, using whatever cover we could find until an Agency armoured vehicle was revealed ahead of us. It wasn’t one that I recognised, though the markings were familiar. For one thing, it didn’t seem to have any wheels, which I took to be a bit of a disadvantage in a personnel carrier. A door at the rear opened and more arms reached out to grab me and drag me inside, dumping me onto the hard metal floor of the vehicle. The soldier who had saved me jumped in and the vehicle sped off even before the door was closed again.
“What the hell are you doing?” someone asked. There were fewer explosions and the ringing in my ears had diminished slightly, so I could hear a little better. “This place is going to be totalled any minute.”
“I couldn’t leave him,” another voice replied, presumably that of the soldier who had helped me. “He’d have been killed … or worse.”
“Better him than us,” the first voice replied. “Can’t you make this bloody thing go any faster?”
“You’re welcome to get out and walk,” another voice replied cheerfully.
“Take a look at his face,” the man who helped me said, “and then tell me that he wasn’t worth bringing along.”
Someone grabbed my hair and pulled my face around. There was an audible gasp.
“That can’t be right,” the first voice said in surprise and wonder.
“No, it’s wronger than flares and afghan coats,” my saviour agreed, “but the Boss’ll want to speak to him for sure.”
“Better patch him up then,” the first voice, which clearly belonged to the man in charge, ordered.
My head was lifted up and something was placed at my lips. Liquid poured down into my throat and I started to cough. An activating spell was spoken and suddenly I could hear again properly, my head no longer swam and I seemed to be able to move my arms and feet more normally. I still ached like someone had taken a lump hammer to me with enthusiasm, but I was alive and I could function.
“What the cr...?”
“You don’t get to talk,” one of the soldiers said urgently and pointed a large gun at my face. “Until the Boss tells you to.”
Moments later I couldn’t have talked if I’d wanted to as all sound was drowned out by the roar of aeroplanes passing overhead at a very low altitude. The whole of the vehicle shuddered and was buffeted by the downwash from the aircraft, slewing from side to side.
“Paste the ugly sods!” one of the soldiers yelled and apparently the aircraft did just that because there was a series of devastating explosions that were so closely spaced they resolved into one continuous roar of sound. A shockwave lifted the rear of the vehicle and pushed it along for quite a distance before finally dissipating and leaving the armoured personnel carrier to drive along under its own steam (or internal combustion or nuclear fusion or whatever it was that actually powered it) for a while.
Eventually, the vehicle slowed and came to halt. The crew were challenged and the leader left the vehicle to speak to the challenger. I wasn’t able to overhear the conversation or the passwords used and the soldier who was guarding me was well enough trained not to be fooled by my pretence at moving around just to get comfortable. Saving me was one thing, but giving me the comforts of home life was quite something else. I was more interested in what they were saving me for. Something to do with my face they had said, but as far as I could tell it was the same face that I had always had. I hadn’t been given the chance to look into a mirror to check, of course, but it certainly felt the same.
The code words were apparently acceptable to whoever had demanded them and the APC moved forward again, driving out of the merciless sunlight and into a darkened space where it stopped and I was ordered to get out.
“The Channel Tunnel,” I recognised the place right off. One of the regular tasks undertaken by U.N.D.E.A.D. was to sweep out the Gremlins that liked to hide in the tunnel and hitch a ride on the passing trains, chewing on the power and brake relays. Getting rid of them was a tedious, thankless task and so the Director reserved it for those who had caused her particular annoyance since the last sweep.
“What do you know about it?” the soldier guarding me demanded, surprised and angry at the same time.
“Not a lot apparently,” I told him, looking around at the familiar place that was no longer so familiar. Though it was undeniably the Channel Tunnel, something fairly catastrophic had happened to it. The end of the tunnel had collapsed, completely filling the aperture. This was, I presumed, an illusion cast to camouflage whatever use the tunnel was being put to since the APC had encountered no trouble in entering the cave. The damage that had been done to the interior of the tunnel was no illusion however. Whole chunks of the wall had fallen out and sections of it had collapsed onto the rails, many of which had been removed where they hadn’t been buried under the debris. There were scorch marks in various places and the whole surface seemed to be pockmarked with what looked like bullet holes. There were plastic cases stacked all around with various designations in military typefaces and none of them suggested that the contents were fluffy bunnies for the children. There were a lot of soldiers milling around and none of them looked as though they had seen any rest in recent times.
“Come on,” the leader of the men who had brought me into this place pushed me by the shoulder. I thought that I was recovered enough to be able to deal with him, but the two others that followed him were far too vigilant for me to be able to get to them before they shot me full of more holes than the tunnel walls. Whatever else they were, they were professional troops and I wasn’t going to be able to get the drop on them. Even if I did, there were dozens of others that I would have to fight my way through before I got out, so I allowed myself to be herded deeper into the tunnel until we reached an area being used as a planning base by the officers.
I was handed over to another couple of soldiers who flanked me on either side and marched me into the enclosure with the leader of the combat troops following on behind.
There was a lot of activity going on inside the command enclosure. Information was coming in via encrypted radio, hologram and crystal ball sets. There was even a report being delivered by an astrally - projected officer in one corner. His situation wasn’t too good judging by the way that the slightly translucent image kept ducking from incoming fire that could neither be seen nor heard. The reports were being run between the various commanders’ tables by junior ranks and orders were then given and transmitted back out to the fighting troops.
“Report,” a lieutenant in an U.N.D.E.A.D. Infantry Corps uniform ordered without looking up from the maps and charts littered over the table that I had been marched toward.
“Zone seven’s been taken,” the leader of the band of men who had brought me in replied smartly. “We were attacked by SlumDogs and had to call in air support to sterilise the area.”
“SlumDogs?” I couldn’t help asking.
SlumDogs existed wherever there were slums. They were six-legged scavengers that lived off the things that even the human slum dwellers wouldn’t eat. There were tales that the more adventurous of them had taken small babies from their makeshift cribs or had feasted on a dead body that nobody had claimed, but these reports had never been proven and were almost certainly urban legends. As the historical slums had been cleared, so the SlumDog population had fallen in line with the loss of their natural habitat. They had nasty claws and sharp little teeth, but only ever attacked people when t
hey had been cornered and couldn’t slink away into the waste pits or sewers. The idea of SlumDogs taking on armed troops was absurd. Even more absurd was the suggestion that they had won.
“Who is this?” the lieutenant asked, finally looking up.
“We found him wandering about out there,” the combat soldier told him.
“Then he should have gone to an evac centre, not here,” the lieutenant pointed out.
“Yes sir,” the fighter replied, clearly meaning ‘no sir’, and adjusted one of the table lamps on the desk so that it illuminated my face.
The lieutenant gasped.
“We thought the Boss would want to see him.”
“You thought right,” the lieutenant confirmed. Picking up a field telephone, he punched in a number. “I need to see the Boss and right now.”
I couldn’t make out what the person on the other end of the line was saying, but the lieutenant insisted, “For this, absolutely.”
That was apparently the right answer because the lieutenant hung up and nodded further down the tunnel. My escort herded me in that direction. We were met at the other side of the enclosure by no less than a major who examined my face intently, through intensely curious and suspicious eyes, before leading us all into a command tent that was set apart from the other areas. One entire wall of the tent was covered with televisions showing images of battle. In front of the screens stood another figure in fatigues, watching events unfolding with hands clasped together behind her back.
“Ma’am,” the major said, interrupting the superior officer’s watchfulness, “I think that you need to see this.”
The female officer turned around and I would have taken a step backward had I not had the muzzle of a gun pressed up against my kidneys.
“David?” Veronika asked, puzzled. No, it was more than puzzlement; it was shock.
There was no doubt the officer was Veronika (I would have recognised that face anywhere, no matter how well disguised), but her previously long hair had been cut severely short and showed more than a few streaks of grey in what remained of it. Her flawless skin had picked up some wrinkles along the way, especially around her mouth and forehead. Her eyes were slightly sunken and surrounded by dark patches that spoke of far too little sleep. There was also a scar that ran from her right temple across her cheek and under her jaw. It was still Veronika, though, and she was still beautiful.
The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D.'s Christmas Carol Page 3
