29
London
Adam arrived in the city driving a stolen Honda. He parked it in an area of North London most people were careful to avoid. He left the keys in the ignition and walked toward the nearest Tube station. It was dawn. He wore a hooded top. The hoodie was still the favored outfit of the petty criminal, so any security footage linking him to the vehicle would be unlikely to elicit any police action. A stolen car abandoned in a dodgy part of town by a hooded figure with a backpack wouldn’t be worth the paperwork.
Adam almost made it to the Tube station without incident. Almost. For a while, he was worried he would have to explore the area a little more to find the kind of trouble he wanted. Then, luckily, it found him.
He was about two blocks from the station, and the street he was on was worse than most. The smell of dope seemed to cling to the very bricks of the old Victorian houses, most of which were boarded up and silent. A couple that weren’t had a sentry on duty. Kids, no older than fourteen. They sat on the steps, sullen and blank-faced, eyeing Adam as he walked unhurriedly. The first kid he saw leaned backward as he passed and called something back into the house behind him. Adam assumed he was raising the alarm. He certainly hoped so. It had been a frustrating few days, and he could do with a workout.
He smiled when he saw them. About two-thirds of the way along the street, they strolled nonchalantly out of one of the houses. Only three of them. Adam didn’t project an intimidating physical presence and he was used to being underestimated. He didn’t slow down but turned as he walked, checking behind him. Two heavy-looking men had appeared at the end of the street. They were leaning against a wall, smoking. If they were armed, their weapons were concealed. So it was no more than handguns, and they stood little chance of hitting him from that distance. He was blocked in. Perfect.
Adam had already checked the cameras in the street. There were only two of them, and they were both wrecked. Judging by the extent of the damage, Adam guessed shotguns had been used. Messy. But also, a clear warning to anyone coming into their territory.
The three men in front moved slowly into the center of the street, blocking his way. None of them spoke. Adam took just a few moments to assess the situation. The man to his left was small, white and twitchy. He looked malnourished. Crack, probably, possibly heroin. He was bare-chested, his head shaved to a fine stubble. He looked impatient, shuffling from one foot to the other. Not much of a threat. If he was going to get involved, Adam guessed he’d use a blade.
The man on the right was huge. Another shaved head, this one black and gleaming with sweat despite the fact that the sun had barely begun to give off any warmth. He was wearing a tracksuit, the top unzipped a little to show an impressive number of gold chains. He had a heavyweight boxer’s build, but it looked like his time in the ring was a few years behind him. His stomach was big, and he moved slowly. Adam wasn’t deceived. He’d wager good money that the ex-fighter still had some moves. He was standing with the right side of his body slightly forward. A south-paw, then.
In the center of the group stood the leader. He wore a cheap, dusty gray suit. The suit jacket had three buttons, all of which were fastened. He was older, a white goatee contrasting with the dark, scarred skin beneath. Goatee looked slightly more wary than his companions, weighing the situation. Not automatically assuming he had the upper hand, despite the numbers. That kind of caution made it obvious he was in charge. That, and the fact he had made it into his fifties in such an unforgiving environment. From the way his jacket hung, the right-hand pocket contained a reasonably heavy handgun. Possibly a Browning Hi-Power. Adam knew the British Army had phased out the Browning a generation ago, and many of them had found their way onto the streets.
Having assessed the threat in the immediate vicinity, Adam slowly turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, checking windows and doorways. No one. Sloppy. They didn’t think he was enough of a threat to warrant armed cover. That simplified things considerably.
Satisfied, Adam spoke.
“Excuse me, I’d like to get through.”
Crackhead hawked and spat on the road.
“Well, no one’s stopping you, pal,” he said. He couldn’t keep still for a second, twitching and bobbing about like a kite in the wind.
“On the contrary,” said Adam. “The three of you are deliberately blocking my way. I don’t want any trouble. I don’t have any money. Please let me pass.”
The leader relaxed just a fraction. He nodded at Crackhead, who stepped forward and brought out a knife, which had been tucked into the back of his pants. He approached Adam with a big grin on his face, weaving from side to side and throwing the knife casually from one hand to the other. It was probably supposed to look intimidating. Adam tried not to laugh. He felt the first touch of the darkness. It felt good. He held up both hands as the man danced closer.
“All right, all right, I was lying, ok?”
Crackhead stopped a few feet away, still counting on his toes, still tossing the knife from hand to hand.
“Yeah, thought so. Hand over the fucking money.”
Adam pretended to look confused. Then his face brightened, and he smiled at the wired, spittle-lipped drug addict.
“Oh, the money! No, I wasn’t lying about that. I was lying about not wanting any trouble.”
As he said the word ‘trouble,’ he took a quick step forward and plucked the knife out of the air in mid-flight. He turned it in his hand, pointed the tip upwards, and rammed it into the scrawny turkey skin under the man’s chin with enough force for it to bury itself to the hilt. The blade was short, only about four inches, so it wouldn’t quite reach the brain. Death would instead be due to blood loss, and might take up to a few minutes. Crackhead had obviously neglected his studies of anatomy and did the worst thing imaginable, under the circumstances - he pulled the knife out. The blade did some more damage on its return journey, leaving no major artery uncut. A gush of blood spurted out, he coughed wetly, voided his bowels and fell over.
During the three seconds it had taken Adam to take the knife and stab Crackhead, the heavyweight had done no more than begin to register what was happening, but Goatee was much quicker to react, as Adam had suspected. He put his hand into his jacket pocket and began to swing the gun inside upward.
Adam realized why the leader wore a cheap suit. He didn’t take the gun out of the pocket before shooting someone. Why spend good money on a jacket you’re going to ruin?
Adam moved fast, directly toward the man, punching him in his left shoulder, which sent him spinning off balance. Adam stepped to the left and, as the spinning man’s back appeared, he grabbed the suit jacket and pulled it down over his shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides. Then he pushed him forward, hard. He fell on his face.
The heavyweight was heading toward him now, massive hands balled into fists, his footwork precise and solid. Adam stepped forward to meet him. As he did so, he trod on Goatee’s right hand, now trapped in the suit pocket. The finger was hooked around the trigger, and with Adam’s weight forcing the gun to turn outward at a forty-five-degree angle, there was a satisfying crack as the bones in the finger snapped in two places. Adam just had time to kick Goatee in the face, smashing his nose, before the heavyweight threw his first punch.
Adam was pleased to see that the punch was a jab, coming from the right hand. The heavyweight wasn’t all brawn and no brain, and was upping his game. The boxer could see Adam was far more dangerous than they had suspected, and wasn’t going to unload his most powerful punch until he had the smaller man where he wanted him. Unfortunately for him, that was never going to happen.
Adam ducked the first jab, then swayed backward to avoid the second. Boxers, if they were to successfully launch a post-professional career as a bodyguard, had to be prepared to unlearn much of what they had been taught. A boxing ring is a purpose-built mini-arena of around twenty square feet. Competitors have to observe certain rules. Unsporting punches lead to deductions on a fighter’s scor
ecard. Low punches may be penalized by verbal warnings, a standing count, or even—in extreme cases—disqualification. Years and years of training involving scrupulous observation of these rules were hard to forget in a real fight with real opponents like Adam, who was only familiar with boxing rules insofar as it enabled him to exploit the weaknesses written into them.
He dropped to his knees and punched the heavyweight, hard. His beautifully placed uppercut hit the man’s testicles with such velocity that one of them was sent back up into his body. Ten days later, once the swelling had subsided sufficiently, a surgeon would locate and remove the errant testicle, slitting the scrotum to replace it, all the time wondering how it had traveled such a distance.
The heavyweight looked for all the world as if he was about to sing an operatic solo. Instead, he expelled every last cubic inch of air from his lungs with a sound almost identical to that of air-brakes being applied by a forty-foot truck.
As the fighter fell, Adam looked back. The rearguard had woken up to what had happened over the course of the previous sixteen seconds and both men were running toward him, handguns raised. Adam smirked. Most petty criminals carried guns for reasons of intimidation and were usually less than competent in their use. If they fired now, they would be almost certain to miss. They were running, they were still fifty yards away, and the sound of shots would certainly attract police attention, even on a street like this one. But the two henchmen were keen to show their loyalty. They started firing. And shouting abuse. Adam wasn’t sure exactly what result either action was intended to produce.
He calmly knelt next to Goatee and wrenched the gun from his pocket. The prone figure made a strangled sound but didn’t move. The gun—a Browning, just as he’d guessed—looked to be well looked after. He checked the clip. Eight of the thirteen rounds were present.
Sliding the clip back in, cocking the gun and thumbing off the safety, Adam took a two-handed grip on the weapon and waited until the men were roughly forty yards away. Then he took his first shot - for calibration purposes. He aimed for the largest mass - the center of the man’s chest. A puff of red from the man’s shoulder as he jerked back gave Adam the information he needed, and the second shot stopped him dead. Literally, as his heart was shredded by the bullet and the splinters of rib that came with it.
The second man was skidding to a halt, adjusting to the changed situation, hoping to get an accurate shot at the hooded lunatic. When he tried to aim, his eyesight blurred as liquid obscured his vision. If he’d still had the capacity for rational thought, he might well have surmised that he’d just been shot in the forehead, and that the liquid was his own blood; but since much of his brain had just been punched through the back of his head, he died in ignorance of either fact.
Adam took the gun from the closest corpse. Always better to have a spare weapon. He jogged away, and was lost to sight before any backup from the street could attempt to avenge their stricken comrades. As soon as the underground station was in sight, he slowed to a walk and joined the crowds heading for their places of employment. His face was one amongst thousands. He boarded a tube packed with commuters and removed his hoodie. Underneath the hood, Adam wore a close-fitting cap and a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses. He put earbuds in and nodded rhythmically, despite the fact that they weren’t plugged into anything.
As he pretended to listen to imaginary music, he briefly reviewed the encounter with the five combatants. He replayed every move carefully, examining his logic in deciding on each defensive or offensive measure. In the heat of battle, training, experience and instinct—in that order—were called upon to prevail. Adam found it hard to fault his actions. A little flamboyant with the knife, perhaps. Crackhead had been the weakest. A neck jab would have been faster and just as effective.
Well, there was always next time. Then he remembered who it was going to be next time. It wasn’t as if a sixteen-year-old girl was going to put up much of a fight.
He would wait until dusk, but no longer.
Adam had time for one more visit before then. This was going to be a beautiful day.
30
There were five of them around the big table in the squat. None of the chairs matched the table or each other and were in various states of disrepair. Much like their occupants—including herself—thought Joni, as she sipped at a hot liquid that Odd had claimed to be tea. It was brown, certainly, but that was where any similarities to tea ended as far as Joni was concerned.
She looked at the ‘family,’ as Charlie had referred to them, only semi-ironically. Charlie may have been the most senior, but her actions made it clear that everyone had a voice and no one was more important than anyone else. She said her husband described her as the most annoying kind of socialist - one who actually allowed her beliefs to affect her personal life. She mentioned Mark—her husband—a couple of times before Joni asked where he was.
“Fenland,” said Charlie. Joni had heard the name somewhere but must have looked a little blank. “It’s the biggest prison for Manna users in the country. First time they caught him, he was in a soup kitchen, using Manna to feed people. Second time, he was on his way home the day of the Oxford Street riot. He tried to get out, but he was trapped inside the cordon when they started throwing in the EMPties. He got rounded up with everyone else, and when they saw his tag, that was it.”
Joni remembered hearing about the Oxford Street riot - it had been nearly three years ago. It had started as a peaceful protest against the Manna Laws. As was often the case, no one had been able to prove whether the police had sent the marchers down a blocked street deliberately, or if it was just an administrative error. Either way, thousands of people—some of them Users, but the majority sympathizers—had found themselves with no way forward and more people being herded in behind. Panic had been quick to spread in the resulting crush, and Manna users had destroyed buildings to clear a path through the blockage, at which point the police had charged. Cellphone footage posted online had showed a number of vans containing tooled-up riot police arriving at the scene with suspicious speed.
Charlie looked at Joni, who was struggling for the right words. She laughed, humorlessly.
“Don’t worry, Joni, there’s nothing you can say, really. We’ve just found ourselves on the wrong side of history. I’d fight for him, do anything to get him back, but I know it won’t do any good. It’ll just get me locked up too, and then what would this lot do?”
She waved her arm at the other occupants of the squat. Odd was calmly sipping his ‘tea,’ his fourth of the morning. His shaved head made him look older, somehow, although that wasn’t the whole story. He didn’t smile as much as Joni remembered, and his blue eyes didn’t sparkle with excitement and curiosity the way they had on the writing course.
If he even went to the writing course in this universe.
Theo and Cass were both letting their teas go cold. They had obviously had endured Odd’s tea-making skills before. They were twins, twelve years old. They had grown up with their Jamaican grandparents in London after their parents had been killed in a fire. The whole family had been strong natural Manna users. The children had been separated from their Grandparents shortly after the Manna gangs had moved into their neighborhood. The twins were both very powerful Sensitives, able to detect anyone within a mile of them who had hostile intentions. Joni knew her mum used to be able to pull the same trick.
The twins rarely spoke. Charlie had rescued them from a Manna gang who had used them as scouts while looting. Powerful Sensitives were rare enough that those gangs who boasted good ones were very keen to hold onto them.
“How did you get them out?” said Joni, looking across at Theo and Cass.
Charlie stirred her drink. She did more stirring than drinking. How was it possible Odd couldn’t see that everyone hated his tea? Joni found she was beginning to get better at not looking at him every few seconds. This morning had already taught her that the word ‘heartache,’ far from being the exclusive province of bad ro
mantic novels, could actually describe a physical symptom.
It’s not him. You’ve never met this person.
It didn’t help.
“It wasn’t my finest hour.” Joni realized she’d missed Charlie’s last few sentences. She tried to review the few words that had broken through her daydream.
“You were in the gang?” she said. Charlie shot her a look that suggested she was reappraising Joni’s level of intelligence.
“I’m not proud of it,” she said. “The gang took what they wanted, they preached a mixture of common sense and hatred. You know, ‘we have to protect ourselves, we’re an unfairly persecuted minority.’ They mixed that with ‘non-Manna users will never understand us, they hate all of us,’ which led to ‘let’s drive these people out of their homes and take everything they have because they’d do the same to us.’”
Charlie sighed. “I was angry about Mark. So angry. I could barely think about anything else - every second of every day. Then, one night, I saw Theo and Cass for the first time. They were kept in the basement, treated like animals. They were powerless, and the gang leaders—for all their preaching about Manna users being better—showed their true colors when it came to looking after their own.”
Cass and Theo looked at Charlie while she spoke. Neither showed much emotion, but they didn’t take their eyes off her face.
“We were out one night. Foraging, Gregor called it. We knew it was looting. I doubled back to the house, unlocked the basement and got Theo. We picked up Cass on our way, crossed the river and looked for somewhere far enough away that they wouldn’t find us. Ran into Odd just when we needed him and the rest is history.”
“You make it sound easy,” said Joni.
In answer, Charlie stood up and turned around. She pulled up her sweater, revealing three scarred marks on her back - two on her left shoulder and the other nearer the middle of her torso. She dropped the sweater back down and turned to Joni.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 83
