Department 19: Battle Lines

by Hill, Will

  He looked over at Pete, who was also staring wide-eyed at the men in black; he wanted to shout that this was their chance, that they should at least try to get the workers out, but he couldn’t make his throat work. Part of him was back in his garden, watching his son bleeding on the lawn, feeling again the terrible impotence that had been the very worst aspect of that awful day: the feeling of helplessness, of being small and scared and weak. So he watched, too scared to move, as the three men in black waited for Albert Harker’s next move.

  *

  “The helmet and the uniform are all well and good,” shouted a voice from somewhere above them. “And I must confess, I had come to believe my brother was lying when he told me you were real. But I know the shape of a legend when I see it. How are you, Mr Frankenstein?”

  The monster twisted the dial on his belt that controlled his helmet’s microphone. “I’m very well, Albert,” he said, his deep voice booming out through the cavernous space. “I assume it would be pointless to ask you to stop this madness?”

  Harker laughed, a high-pitched noise that was close to a scream. “You assume correctly,” he said. “Although I must say, I am deeply flattered that Blacklight sent you to try and stop me. That is a far greater compliment than my family ever paid me.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy,” said Frankenstein. “Why don’t you come down here so I can show you just how glad I am?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” replied Harker. “I’m rather enjoying the view from up here. I see you so clearly and you see nothing. It suits my purposes rather well.”

  “Which are?” asked Frankenstein.

  “Deciding how to kill the three of you,” said Harker. “I would ideally like to let you experience a little of what your beloved Department did to me, but I’m afraid we simply do not have the time. Agonising pain will have to do.”

  Matt twisted the dial on his belt to thermographic and scanned the darkness above the machines, looking for movement, for the telltale points of glowing red, but could see nothing. His heart pounded in his chest and his legs felt like jelly.

  “Where is he?” he asked. “I can’t see him.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Kate. “He’s going to have to show himself at some point. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “I’m ready when you are, Albert,” said Frankenstein. “In the meantime, I’m starting to find these machines annoying. I’m sure you understand.”

  The monster strode forward, raising his shotgun as he did so. He jammed its barrel into a vent on the side of the machine at the end of the press and pulled the trigger three times. The machine exploded, its panels buckling, its insides crunching as it ground to a halt. Copies of The Globe quickly piled up inside it, fouling the line and blocking the conveyor belt. All the way along the press, alarms began to wail as the machines shut down one after the other.

  A scream of fury echoed from the darkness overhead.

  Matt braced himself.

  Here he comes.

  But nothing happened. The scream died away, and from somewhere in the distance there came the tinkling of breaking glass.

  “That really pissed him off,” said Kate. “Was that a good idea?”

  Frankenstein grunted. “Can’t hurt,” he said. “Angry people tend to make mistakes. And we can hear better without those damn machines running.”

  Matt opened his mouth to answer, but didn’t get the chance.

  With a huge screech of rending metal, the rolling door that the five of them were leaning against exploded inwards, sending them sprawling across the floor of the loading bay. The metal frame slammed into Matt’s lower back, sending a bolt of agony shooting through him; he hit the ground and dragged himself forward, his teeth gritted, the blood pounding in his head. Around him, heavy thuds and cries of shock and pain rang out across the loading area.

  Matt turned his head and saw his father roll across the floor, blood pumping from a gash across his forehead. Kate’s dad was on his back, the buckled frame of the door pinning his legs. Matt used all his strength and flipped himself over on to his back; the metal sheet was lying across his thighs, but he could still move. He pushed himself backwards as Kate yelled in pain; he risked a glance in her direction and saw the door pressing down on her stomach. Frankenstein couldn’t be seen at all; there was simply a large bulge in the metal at the edge of the fallen door, where he was presumably lying.

  A dark rectangle stood open to the night sky where the door had been. For a second, there was silence, then Albert Harker dropped casually into it, his eyes blazing, a vicious grin twisting his face, and strolled into the loading area.

  “All your training,” said Harker, his tone warm and friendly. “All your weapons and your tactics and your experience, and you fail to be aware of your surroundings.”

  Matt pushed against the floor with all his might. The twisted metal of the door scraped down his shins, causing him to cry out with pain. His feet reached the edge of the frame and, for an awful moment, he was stuck; he bore down, ignoring the agony radiating from his ankles, and they slid out from beneath the door. He scrambled to his feet, pain stabbing at him from a dozen places, and backed away, his eyes fixed on the approaching vampire.

  “Matt,” screamed Kate, her voice loud in his ear. “Be careful, Matt.”

  “You have spirit,” continued Harker, smiling broadly at him. “What a brave little stormtrooper you are. I bet Blacklight are terribly proud of you, aren’t they? Not like me. I should have been like you, but I never got the chance.”

  The vampire walked across the fallen door, the metal creaking and bending under his weight. He reached the edge and floated down on to the concrete floor. Kate was still squirming, trying to lift the heavy frame. Harker looked down for a moment, then swung his foot against the side of her helmet. There was a sound like breaking pottery and she lay still. The vampire raised his head and resumed his course towards Matt.

  “My own father didn’t want me to join his precious Department,” said Harker. “Did you know that? I bet you did. I’m sure you and your colleagues still laugh about what he did to me. After all, I deserved it, didn’t I? I might have embarrassed him and my brother, and that could never have been allowed.”

  Matt raised his T-Bone with shaking hands. He had managed to hold on to it when the edge of the door had thrown him forward, but he had no idea whether it had been damaged as he fell. He kept backing away as the vampire came forward, his eyes burning red.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” said Harker, smiling at him. “Not immediately, anyway. I’m going to break your spine and let you watch while I kill your friends. That seems only fair.”

  The conveyor belt, full of copies of The Globe, thudded against Matt’s lower back, leaving him nowhere to go.

  Oh God. Do something, before it’s too late. Oh God. Oh God.

  He set the T-Bone against his shoulder, sighted down the barrel, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger; the metal stake burst from the barrel with a loud bang of exploding gas. Harker’s smile widened as he slid to his left, inhumanly fast. The stake rocketed past him and clattered uselessly against the wall.

  Matt let the weapon fall to the floor and pulled the MP5 from its loop on his belt as panic barrelled through his system, gripping at his heart and threatening to reduce him to tears of abject misery. He raised it in hands that felt as weak as a newborn’s, and was about to pull the trigger when a dark shape rose up behind Albert Harker, taller and wider than the vampire by far.

  There was a blur of movement and a fist the size of a basketball crashed into the side of Harker’s head, sending him flying across the loading bay. The vampire smashed into one of the machines with a deafening crash, then slid to the floor. Matt was still holding the MP5 in his hands and staring wide-eyed at the place where the vampire had been; it was now occupied by the giant figure of Frankenstein, his helmet gone, his grey-green face twisted with fury.

  “Are you hurt?” he growled.

  Matt shook h
is head, his eyes wide, his chest heaving up and down.

  Frankenstein nodded, then strode across the floor and lifted Albert Harker into the air. The vampire’s face came up and Matt gasped. His nose was squashed flat, his front teeth were shattered, and blood was spraying out of a gash that ran the width of his forehead. But what was worse was the noise emanating from Harker’s mouth: a high-pitched, shrieking sound that Matt realised, a millisecond too late to warn Frankenstein, was laughter.

  The vampire’s fist thundered into the monster’s stomach, driving the air out of him. His grip sprang open and Harker floated gently to the ground as Frankenstein staggered backwards.

  “Nice punch,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “Would you care to bet that you don’t land another?”

  Frankenstein dragged in a deep breath, stood up straight, and looked at the vampire. “I don’t gamble,” he said. “I don’t believe in chance.”

  “How interesting,” said Harker. A smile spread across his broken face; in the same instant, he launched himself forward, his hands outstretched and grasping.

  Frankenstein saw him coming; he twisted his body, impossibly fast for a man his size, and clubbed the vampire out of the air with a huge forearm. Harker’s smile evaporated as he was driven into the concrete, digging a long furrow in the floor. A cloud of concrete dust exploded into the air, then swirled and billowed as Frankenstein ran through it. Incredibly, Harker was already on his knees by the time the monster arrived in front of him.

  Frankenstein didn’t even break stride; he swung one of his tree-trunk legs and kicked the vampire in the chest. There was a huge cracking sound and Harker screamed in agony as he was thrown backwards through the air, clutching at his shattered ribs and solar plexus. Blood rose up from somewhere inside him and erupted into the air as he screamed, his blazing eyes rolling wildly in their sockets.

  He crashed to the ground and Frankenstein raised his foot again, apparently intending to stamp the vampire’s head into the concrete and grind the life out of him. He brought it down, a terrifying look of rage on his huge, misshapen face, and connected with thin air as Albert Harker threw himself out of the way. He skidded across the floor, twisting on to his back as he went, then leapt to his feet. Frankenstein turned and the two men, who were in different ways both so much more, faced each other.

  Matt stared, his weapons long forgotten, as the two monsters threw themselves towards each other, colliding with a noise like a train crash. In the corner of his eye he saw Kate’s arms begin to move and heard a low, distant groan in his ear.

  Frankenstein felt one of his ribs break as Albert Harker slipped beneath a long, looping haymaker and slammed his fist into his side. He clenched his jaw as the vampire circled away, trying not to show how much the blow had taken out of him.

  He’s strong. Really strong.

  Harker moved in on him again, a dark, bleeding blur, and Frankenstein feigned left then right. The vampire’s fingers sliced through the air where his face had been; he reached out, lightning fast, and gripped one of Harker’s wrists. He squeezed and twisted at the same time, and felt a surge of satisfaction as bones broke inside his fist.

  Harker bellowed in pain, wrenched his shattered wrist free, and backed away. Frankenstein hauled in a deep breath, then felt it freeze in his chest as Harker leapt forward again, so fast, far too fast, and landed a catastrophic punch on the centre of his chin. Pain tore through his skull and darkness exploded around him as he fell backwards towards the floor. His last thought, as the ground rushed up to meet him, was a simple one.

  Too slow.

  Matt watched in horror as the monster fell to the concrete floor.

  The groaning in his ears was becoming louder and more insistent, but he wasn’t listening; his mind was reeling from the sight of the defeated Frankenstein. Albert Harker staggered, clutching at his chest; it looked as though the punch had taken almost as much out of him as it had its target. Then he spat a dark wad of blood on to the ground, stood up straight, and turned to Matt.

  The vampire walked slowly towards him, a smile of inevitability on his damaged face. The noise in his ears had become louder and its rhythm had changed; as Matt stared desperately at the terrible figure approaching him, he realised it had become two words, spoken by a croaking, battered version of Kate’s familiar voice. He focused his reeling mind, and heard them.

  “Beam… gun.”

  Matt’s eyes widened; he reached down and grabbed the heavy cylinder from its loop on his belt. A small frown crossed Albert Harker’s face a millisecond before Matt pushed his beam gun’s button and pointed the wide ultraviolet beam directly at it.

  Purple fire burst from the vampire’s features and he screamed in high-pitched agony. Harker beat at his face with his hands, stumbling to his knees as he did so; the fire licked across his fingers, burning them red, as smoke began to plume from his body. Matt stared, his stomach churning, as Harker beat out the roaring purple flames and raised his head.

  What looked at him was little more than a skull.

  One of the eyes was gone; the other swivelled madly. The skin of Harker’s face had dissolved, revealing thick muscle and gleaming white bone. His teeth were visible through ragged holes in his cheeks, and his scalp was burnt black where his hair had caught fire.

  Then slowly, almost unbelievably, the vampire climbed to his feet.

  The pain was beyond excruciating; Albert Harker felt as though he was being sliced to ribbons with a thousand razor blades.

  His face burned with an agony he would not have thought possible, and his nostrils were full of the smell of his own roasted flesh. His mind was reeling with shock; he tried to form a single coherent thought and felt it slip away, over and over. Acting on nothing more than instinct, he lurched to his feet and looked around the loading bay with half of his vision dark. The printing press workers were staring at him with stricken expressions of horror on their faces. One of the Blacklight soldiers was still squirming beneath the fallen door, one was still backed against the conveyor belt, and the big one, the monster, was lying still on the floor. Pete Randall and Greg Browning were looking at him with disgust on their pale faces. And McKenna? Kevin McKenna was dead, his throat torn out by Albert’s own hands; the journalist’s blood had coated his skin until the purple fire had burned it away.

  Clarity swept through his damaged, broken mind, carrying with it the voices of his father and brother.

  Failure. Disappointment. Embarrassment.

  Harker threw back his head and howled, a harsh, jagged noise that sounded far from human. He had controlled the pain of what had been done to him for so long, using it as fuel to keep his desire for revenge burning, but now it ran freely through him, threatening to drive him to his knees.

  Useless. Black sheep. Second-best.

  He looked at the conveyor belt, at hundreds of copies of the newspaper he had killed to produce, and felt something tear open inside him. It was as though the flames had scoured his soul, leaving behind an empty husk that had brought damnation upon itself when it had spilled innocent blood.

  Godforsaken. Waste. Disgrace.

  Harker howled again, as the voices of his father and brother screamed at him, telling him that he had done nothing less than prove them right, that he had deserved everything that had happened to him. Kevin McKenna rose into his mind, his nervous, open face now harsh and accusing, his ruined throat gushing blood as he asked the question that he had asked so many times, the question that Harker had answered every time with lies.

  No one gets hurt, right?

  The vampire staggered towards him, smoke rising from his head and neck. Matt dropped the spent beam gun and pulled his stake from his belt; he held it out before him in a shaking hand, his reason wiped away by the unrelenting horror that had unfolded around him.

  Albert Harker stopped before him, his breath coming in ragged whistles, his one remaining eye spinning in its socket, the distance between himself and the stake in the terrified teenager’
s hand no more than a few centimetres.

  “Make them proud,” said the vampire, the words wet and strangled. “Tell my father and brother what you did. They’ll be so proud of you.”

  Matt couldn’t move. He was transfixed by the smoking, devastated chaos that had been Albert Harker’s face; he could not tear his gaze away from it.

  The vampire growled, then moved, his hands rising towards Matt’s neck. His mind unfroze and he pushed the stake forward, but was too slow, much too—

  Crunch.

  Matt stared in amazement as his stake disappeared into Albert Harker’s chest. Blood began to pour from the wound, running down the metal barrel and soaking his gloved hand, but the vampire seemed not to notice. He looked down, the white of his remaining eye now red, the iris black. Then he looked back up at Matt, his mouth twitching at the corners.

  Smiling, thought Matt. It looks like he’s smiling.

  Then Albert Harker exploded, in a thunderclap of steaming blood that soaked Matt from head to toe.

  Matt Browning looked round the silent loading bay. The spreading pool of blood that had been Albert Harker glistened beneath the fluorescent lights. Kate was still trapped beneath the fallen door, but was croaking an incoherent stream of cheers and congratulations into his ears. Frankenstein was flat on the ground, his chest rising and falling steadily. The printing press workers were gathered round the forklift, alongside—

  His breath caught in his chest.

  In the midst of all the screaming, the violence and the spilled blood, he had forgotten what had brought him and Kate on their headlong quest to confront Albert Harker. Now, as he looked at his father’s pale, drawn face, he remembered.

  Greg Browning was standing beside Pete Randall, identical looks of shock standing out on both of their faces. The urge to run over and hug his dad returned, hotter and stronger than ever, but he forced himself to slow down, to think clearly. He took a deep breath, then ran across to where Kate was wrestling with the fallen door; he gripped the edge, heaved with all his strength, and held it up as she wriggled free. She clambered to her feet, then grabbed him in a long, fierce hug.