Department 19: Battle Lines

by Hill, Will

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it. Why are we here? Harker doesn’t need us to do what he’s doing. He could do this on his own. And the last thing McKenna said to me, the last thing he said to anyone, was, ‘I’m doing this for you.’ I think he realised that he’d been lied to and was trying to do something about it.”

  “But Harker is doing what he told us he was going to do,” said Greg. He reached out, grabbed one of the copies off the belt, pretended to examine it, then put it back. “It’s happening, Pete. The public are going to know.”

  “And five innocent people are dead,” said Pete. “He’s doing it, but I don’t think he’s doing it for the same reasons as you and me, for the reasons he told us and Kevin. This is about revenge for him. He thinks Blacklight are on their way here right now and he isn’t scared, Greg. He’s excited.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” hissed Pete. “But what do you think is going to happen to us if he’s right and the men in black show up? We might not have killed anyone, but you tied those men up, and I stood still and did nothing when he tore two of their throats out. We have to get out of here.”

  “How?” asked Greg. He looked up for a split second and Pete saw the naked fear in his new friend’s eye. “We can’t fight him, not the two of us on our own. I doubt the seven of us can, even if we could persuade the others to try.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pete. “I don’t have a plan. But we’d better think of something, because if Albert is right, this is only going to get worse.”

  The helicopter containing Kate Randall, Matt Browning and Victor Frankenstein touched down outside The Globe’s printing facility with a heavy thud.

  The car park was deserted; scraps of litter, thrown into the air by the draught from the rotor blades, swirled across the tarmac, and street lights cast a pale amber glow. Frankenstein leapt easily down, then held out his hand. Kate took it and allowed herself to be helped to the ground, before Matt did the same. As soon as they were all safely clear, the helicopter roared back into the air, disappearing into the dark sky overhead.

  Matt watched it go. His stomach felt as though it was filled with concrete: a painful, relentless pressure that made it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. He was scared; Kate knew it, and he was pretty sure that Frankenstein did too. That was fine. What he hoped they also knew was that he had no intention of letting them down.

  The printing press loomed over them, a huge grey building with a glass reception. Even from where they were standing, perhaps fifteen metres away, Matt could see that at least one of the panes of glass was cracked and that red covered much of the small transparent area.

  “Blood,” he said, pointing with a gloved finger. “Lots of it.”

  “I see it,” said Kate. “Let’s move. Ready One from here on. Matt, visors at all times for you and me. We can’t let anyone see who we are. Silent comms. Is that clear?”

  “Clear,” he said. He flipped his visor down, marvelling as ever at the technology contained within the thin sheet of coated plastic. Kate did the same, then spoke into his ear. “Are you ready for this, Matt?”

  “I’m ready,” he replied, with as much conviction as he could muster. “Lead the way.”

  Kate did so, drawing her T-Bone as she walked and holding it before her, one hand resting beneath its barrel, the other curled round its grip. Matt did likewise, feeling the heavy weight of the weapon in his hands. Frankenstein left his T-Bone on his belt, but drew the enormous silver shotgun from its holster that ran down his long spine. They walked forward in a line, like gunslingers down the main street of an old Western town as the clock ticked towards high noon.

  The reception door was controlled remotely, but Frankenstein simply pushed its handle until the lock gave way. Kate stepped inside, with Matt following close behind her. The smell hit him instantly: the rich, coppery scent of the blood that covered the floor, the desk, and ran in thick streaks down the glass walls. Frankenstein stepped round the desk and checked the security guard who was lying beneath it. There was no need to do the same for the other man; his throat had been torn wide open.

  “Dead,” said Frankenstein. “Tied up first, for a while at least. His hands are blue.”

  “Something went wrong,” said Kate. “I doubt the plan was to decorate this room with blood. Anyone could have seen it.”

  “Agreed,” said Frankenstein. “I want you both to be very careful. This thing, whatever it is, might be unravelling.”

  Matt nodded, his stomach churning. He had seen his fair share of blood, including a great spray of his own as it burst from the hole Larissa had made in his neck, but he was not as used to dealing with it as his companions.

  “Come on,” said Kate. “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”

  She crossed the blood-soaked reception and looked at the doors that presumably led into the facility proper. They were hanging slightly off their hinges, broken by a feat of unnatural strength. Matt took a deep breath, then stepped up beside her. Frankenstein brought up the rear, towering over them both.

  Kate reached out, took the handle in her hand, and pushed the door open. A huge cacophony of noise rolled through the empty space and into their eardrums, and Matt winced behind his visor. Kate pushed the door wider and slipped through the gap. He followed, with Frankenstein close behind him.

  The room they had entered was huge, a tangled labyrinth of metal and spinning rubber. Matt, whose heart always lifted at the sight of feats of engineering, especially on this sort of scale, stared with fascination, until Kate grabbed his arm and told him he was standing in someone’s blood; he looked down and felt his stomach lurch.

  “Jesus,” he said, his voice low. He glanced around and instantly saw the source of the pool of crimson beneath his feet. Two men were lying by the wall, their throats torn open, their eyes blank and staring. Frankenstein knelt down beside them; he pressed two long grey-green fingers to each of their necks in turn and shook his head.

  “Where are they?” asked Matt, his voice low. “Harker. Our dads.”

  “They’re in here somewhere,” said Kate.

  “Don’t tell me we’re splitting up to look for them,” said Matt. “Because that only ever seems like a stupid idea to me.”

  Kate smiled behind her visor and shook her head. “We stick together,” she said. “Like we said we would.”

  56

  WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN

  The heat in the warehouse office was instantly overpowering, as flames exploded across the walls and floor.

  Jamie felt the air burn his nostrils and his throat, and turned back into the inferno, grabbing for Ellison through the rising hurricane of fire. She had managed to lower her visor, but she was doubled over, coughing heavily into the speaker in his ear as flames billowed round her legs. The Blacklight uniforms were fire-retardant, but Jamie didn’t think they had been designed with fire this intense in mind.

  He plunged into the flames, shouting Ellison’s name. She struggled upright and reached out a gloved hand; he grabbed for it, feeling the heat beginning to seep through his suit, feeling the sheen of sweat that was now coating him from head to toe. He closed his fingers tightly round hers and hauled her forward. She staggered through the fire, a dark shimmering shape in the inferno the small concrete room had become. Above his head, Jamie heard a terrible crackling noise, as a thick, fatty smell invaded his nostrils; John Morton’s corpse was beginning to burn, suspended over the flames like a stuck pig.

  Jamie grabbed his squad mate’s shoulder and shoved her towards the open doorway with all his might. Ellison stumbled over her own feet, but she didn’t fall, not until she burst into the cool darkness of the corridor. He ran for the door, feeling the heat at his back beginning to become unbearable, and slid to the floor beside her. She was coughing again, her body shaking as she wrapped her arms round her stomach. He lifted her visor and looked at her; her face was a bright shade of pink, but her eyes we
re clear, even as tears ran from their corners. She pushed him away, her eyes flashing with anger.

  “Go after him,” she croaked. “I’ll be fine.”

  Jamie didn’t waste a second checking whether she meant what she said; he leapt to his feet and sprinted away down the corridor, in the only direction Alastair Dempsey could have fled.

  His boots thudded against the metal stairs as he took them two at a time. As he ran, he twisted the dial on his belt and changed his helmet’s view to thermographic imaging. There was a faint haze of residual heat floating on the air as he dipped his shoulder, smashed open the door at the bottom of the stairs, and burst back into the cavernous empty space of the warehouse.

  Jamie scanned it quickly, looking for the telltale pillar of white and yellow heat that the vampire could not disguise, but saw nothing. He twisted the dial again, switching his helmet’s visual mode back to normal, and immediately saw something different; one of the metal shutter doors was standing halfway open. Rain was pouring through the empty rectangle and the dim glow of street lights illuminated its edges.

  Jamie ran towards it, pressing the button that established a secure connection with the Loop as he did so. A second later an Operator from the Surveillance Division answered.

  “Priority Level target Dempsey, Alastair,” shouted Jamie. “He’s moving. Tell me you’ve got him?”

  “Code in,” replied the voice.

  “Carpenter, Jamie, NS303, 67-J,” he yelled. “Give me his position, right now.”

  “Establishing,” said the voice. “Three hundred metres south-south-west of your position. In motion.”

  Jamie ducked under the half-open door and skidded out on to the street. Rain poured down from the sky and was whipped against him by the gusting wind. He grabbed his console from his belt, checked his position on the map that lit up the screen, and set off down Bridle Lane at a flat sprint.

  “Give me running updates,” he shouted, his boots pounding the tarmac. “Don’t you lose him.”

  Jamie ran as though his life depended on it, his arms pumping, his heart thundering in his chest.

  Not this time, he thought. You’re not getting away again.

  Several men and women, huddled against the rain or drunkenly embracing it, stopped and stared at him as he ran, but he ignored them; he knew he was breaching a fundamental Blacklight regulation by exposing himself to such public scrutiny, but that didn’t matter right now.

  Nothing mattered beyond seeing Alastair Dempsey destroyed.

  An alleyway opened up to his right and he headed towards it, his boots slipping and sliding on the wet ground. His balance shifted, and for a brief moment he thought he was going to fall, but then his momentum carried him round the corner, and he accelerated again.

  “Distance?” he shouted. The alleyway narrowed alarmingly, but was open at the far end, and he sprinted towards the tall, tapering gap.

  “One hundred and ninety metres,” replied the Surveillance Operator. “Course unchanged.”

  Catching him. I’m catching him, he thought.

  Dempsey was evidently not hurrying; Jamie wondered whether he was assuming that they had died in the fire trap he had set for them, but doubted that the vampire would be that complacent. More likely, he was unaware of the level of surveillance his pursuers were capable of bringing to bear. He probably believed that his head start, when combined with the darkness and the labyrinthine backstreets of this section of Central London, was enough to guarantee his escape.

  Wrong, Jamie thought, baring his teeth in a smile so savage that anyone who saw it would have backed away immediately. Dead wrong.

  Jamie reached the end of the alleyway and sprinted out across the street without slowing; if there had been a taxi making its way down the road, his pursuit of Alastair Dempsey would have ended with him in hospital, or worse. But the street was empty. Rising from the pavement on the opposite side was another narrow opening, cluttered with discarded rubbish and the dissolving remains of cardboard boxes. He ploughed through them and kept running.

  “Position?” he yelled.

  “Forty-five metres,” replied the Operator, instantly. “Directly ahead of you.”

  “Jamie?” said Ellison’s voice. It was raw, little more than a croak, but it was full of determination. “Where are you?”

  “Surveillance,” said Jamie, as he ran down the alleyway. “Give Operator Ellison my location.”

  The Operator immediately began to give his squad mate directions; he tuned them out, focusing entirely on the pursuit of Alastair Dempsey. The alleyway he was running down was long and empty, stretching all the way to the hustle and bustle of Lexington Street.

  I should be right on top of him. Where the hell is he?

  He twisted the dial on his belt back to thermographic, and saw him.

  The vampire was making his way along the roof of the building that made up the right-hand wall of the alleyway, a bright blob of white and orange four storeys up that Jamie would never have seen without the visual enhancement his visor offered him. He skidded to a halt and pressed himself into the shadows on the wall to his left, watching to see whether Dempsey had heard his pursuit. The rain thundered down against the pavement, as dark grey clouds roiled against the black night sky.

  Dempsey gave no indication that he had realised he was being followed. The vampire continued along the edge of the roof, gliding above the tiles at little more than walking speed, as though he was merely taking an evening stroll across the sodden canopy of the capital. Then, without warning, he floated into the air and across the alleyway, before resuming his course directly above Jamie’s head.

  Jamie crouched down and ran across the narrow passage. He looked up and saw the vampire continuing in the same direction, towards the busy road that was getting closer and closer. He followed Dempsey, matching his speed, then froze as the vampire leapt easily back across the narrow gap.

  He’s having fun up there, he thought, hatred spilling through him. He’s having a great time.

  His mind was racing, trying to work out how to bring Dempsey down to his level, where he might have the advantage. If they reached Lexington Street, it was over; no matter how angry he was, how hot and livid his desire for vengeance might be, he simply could not follow the vampire into a heavily populated area; the risk of exposure was just too great. As he stared upwards, an idea occurred to him; it was a long shot, but it was going to have to do.

  Jamie reached down, never taking his eyes off Dempsey, and unclipped the ultraviolet beam gun from his belt. Then he ran forward, hoping that the drumming of the rain would hide the sound of his footsteps, that the monster above his head would not choose that particular moment to look down. He waited until he was fifteen metres ahead of the strolling, dancing vampire, then stopped and raised the beam gun.

  One shot, he thought, feeling his body fill with a familiar icy calm. If I miss, he’s gone again.

  He stared up at Dempsey, still little more than a distant splash of bright white and yellow heat, and felt his heart slow down, his breathing become low and even.

  One shot.

  Four storeys up, Alastair Dempsey turned to his left and floated easily into the air. In the alleyway directly beneath him, Jamie Carpenter pressed the button on his beam gun, and hoped.

  A bright shaft of purple light burst up through the rain, piercing the gloom of the night sky, and enveloped the vampire completely.

  Dempsey erupted in purple fire, screaming with sudden shock and pain. His trajectory was fatally compromised; the vampire thrashed and screamed, beating at his own skin, trying to extinguish the roaring purple flames, and crashed into the side of the building, high above Jamie’s head. He grabbed the wet bricks, screaming and fighting to stay in the air, but it was futile. With his flesh burning, with fire roaring down his throat and into his lungs, Dempsey descended towards the ground in a series of lurching drops.

  Jamie kept the purple beam trained on him, his head roaring with savage delight, with the
primeval desire to hunt and kill. The vampire made one final, doomed effort to postpone the inevitable, his burning fingers scrabbling at nothing, then fell to the soaking alleyway floor in a heap of blood and burning meat. A cloud of steam rose from him, and he lay still.

  Jamie turned off the beam gun, placed it back in its loop on his belt, and breathed out a long, deep sigh. Nothing was going to bring John Morton back, or erase Jamie’s memory of the horrors that had been inflicted upon his squad mate, so this was the best he could do: ensuring that the monster who had killed Morton would never get the chance to hurt anyone else. Revenge was not the same as justice, but in this case, it would have to do; it was all he had to offer.

  He drew his Glock and quickly screwed a suppressor on to its barrel.

  “Jamie?” said Ellison, her voice loud and harsh in his ear. “I saw the UV. What’s going on?”

  “He’s down,” he said, and heard the tremor in his own voice. “I got him.”

  “Don’t destroy him,” said Ellison, instantly, and he recoiled at the passion in her voice. “Wait for me. Please?”

  “I’ll wait,” he said. “Hurry.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Jamie looked down at the steaming remains of Alastair Dempsey. Most of his skin was burned bright red, although there were patches where it was either black or burned away entirely. It was peeling in sheets and covered in wide blisters; several of these had burst, sending thick whitish-yellow fluid running on to the pavement, where it was carried away by the rushing rainwater. The vampire wasn’t moving; his eyes were closed, his mouth open and filling with rain.

  Playing dead, thought Jamie. Give me a break.

  He raised the Glock, pointed it at Alastair Dempsey’s knee, and pulled the trigger. The gunshot cracked in the sodden night air and the bullet slammed into the wall where the vampire had been a millisecond earlier.