No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “I don’t know,” says Tweedledee. “Sounds like bullshit to—”

  “It’s your grimoire.” I talk straight to Olsted. It’s him I have to sell it to. He’s the boss. The bad guy. Dee and Dum are the ugly movie henchmen. And henchmen do what the bad guy says. And when I say grimoire, Olsted’s eyes go wide. “This man—” I point to Clyde “—is after your grimoire.”

  Olsted opens his mouth several times. He looks to Tweedledee and Tweedledum, uncertain, unsure. And I realize that out of nowhere this plan is working. I somehow have him on the back of his heels. I just need to push him one more time to get him reeling.

  “The British government believes that the security of your grimoire is an issue of national importance,” I say.

  “It does?” Olsted looks utterly bewildered. And considering the bastard is using it to betray humanity to bloody aliens, I don’t blame him.

  “The British government has great faith in you, Mr. Olsted,” I lie.

  “Th— Thank you,” says Olsted.

  We stand there in silence. Well, silence if you ignore Clyde’s moans of pain. Which I’m definitely trying to do. I keep my eyes on Olsted.

  “Do you...” He looks down at Clyde. “Should you...”

  “The grimoire,” I say to Olsted. “I need to see the grimoire.” I try to say it like he’s an idiot. Like I’m not on the verge of soiling myself. Because this is it. Make or break. This is where I either get to walk away or get to go to sleep under six inches of England’s good fresh soil.

  “What?” Olsted is still confused. I reach for some deeper layer of bullshit. Kurt Russell, I tell myself. Do what Kurt Russell would do. In a world gone mad, that this plan should work almost makes sense.

  “Mr. Bradley, here,” I indicate Clyde, “represents but one strand of his cabal’s web of deceit. MI37 has intercepted him, has intercepted his part of the plan, but I have no idea if you have been targeted by other parts of his organization, or by his competitors. As I said, the British government views the security of your grimoire as being of vital importance. I need to ensure that it is indeed safe. If you would please show it to me.”

  Olsted stares at me. The gears are still skittering in his head, I can tell, but they’re turning. Something is going on back there.

  “Christopher,” he says to Tweedledee, “Samuel—” Tweedledum “—take this” he kicks Clyde “—thing into Ilsa’s room. Bind him.” He looks to me for confirmation. Which is good. Which is very good. Not for Clyde, of course, but... I nod.

  “Stay with him,” Olsted continues. “Make sure Ilsa doesn’t...” he trails off. The goons nod. Something is not being said. Something I don’t understand. But I don’t need to, because the next thing Olsted says is, “Come with me, Mr. Wallace.”

  Dum and Dee drag Clyde off in one direction, Olsted leads me in another. The main body of the apartment is open-plan and modern. A kitchen opens onto a dining room, which merges with a living room. I can almost imagine Swedish people emerging from hidden cabinets.

  Olsted swipes an AA battery off a counter top and mutters something I can’t quite hear. On the wall in front of us, between two Van Gogh prints, a door appears. There is no shimmer, no moment of in-between. It’s more like an awkward cut in a film, an abrupt jump. It’s not there. It is. Olsted opens it without ceremony.

  I almost hesitate going through. I feel there should have been more... theater to the big reveal. This feels underwhelming, as if I’ve missed something.

  The room Olsted has revealed is equally unassuming. It looks more like a junk room—a square metal cube lit by halogen strip lamps. Boxes of junk lie around the floor— rusted metal sheets, bent tailpipes, chunks of rebar, all in beaten-up wooden crates. And cats too, of course. Because why just use your top-secret magical safe for storing scrap metal when you can throw in a tabby, a tortoiseshell, and a scratching post, as well?

  The more of this magic stuff I see, the more I’m certain it drives you crazy.

  Olsted moves across the room quickly, ignoring its contents. There is a second doorway. A purple velvet curtain blocks it but he pushes it aside and I get a glimpse of what lies beyond. And that is a little more like it.

  The room is circular, the ceiling high. There is a pentagram in gold upon the floor. In the center of the room and the pentagram is a lectern of polished wood. The natural rhythms of the wood have been carved into the pattern of twisting limbs—half human, half other— that reach up its elegant splayed shelf. On it lies the cracked leather tome.

  It is so Hammer horror, I expect Christopher Lee to rise out of a tomb at the back of the place. I love it.

  Olsted lays a hand on the book. “Safe,” he says.

  But that is the last thing he says, because then I hit him on the back of the neck with a length of pipe purloined from his junk room. The metal vibrates and the shock goes up my arms to my shoulders. I almost drop the pipe with a grunt. But Olsted doesn’t make a sound as he falls like a narcoleptic.

  I nearly shout in victory, but I’m still undercover, even if I’m undercover as myself, so I satisfy the urge with a fist pump. Next, I get to the business of actually thieving the grimoire, which is heavier than it looks, but otherwise unsecured. Its only guardian is on the floor sleeping like a babe.

  Now just to rescue Clyde from two heavily armed men. But I can do this. I can bloody do this.

  I turn and pull back the velvet curtain to reveal the junk room. A massive spark fills the room with blue light. I reel backwards, arm up. But even as I move a massive wind seems to rise from nowhere, buffeting at me like a giant snatching hand. Junk whirls past me and I duck back from the flying debris.

  Suddenly the center of the room is a cyclone, whipping the metal trash around faster and faster into a jagged, deadly mess. Even above the rising howl of the room I can hear metal screeching as chunks of ironwork smash into each other, warping and tearing.

  I’ve triggered one of the magical machines Clyde told me about. I’ve triggered a trap.

  I’m cornered. Oh shit and balls. I can’t go in there. I’ll be smashed to bloody pieces. Jesus—the cats. They must be pulp by now. What sick bastard keeps cats in a booby-trapped room? I should have hit him harder.

  But what the hell do I do? On the one hand, I do not want to end up like the cats. On the other, I’m coming up a little short on alternative exits.

  I look down at Olsted’s comatose form. There has to be some switch, some trigger, I missed. Some infrared device in his ring, or glasses, or something. Bastard. Some wicked, frustrated part of me wants to chuck him in the junk room with his dead cats.

  Still, it’s not all bad. If I can’t get out, then Tweedledee and Dum can’t get to me. I just need to think of a plan while the spell lasts.

  Except suddenly the tornado finds a whole new gear and suddenly I am losing my footing, being sucked toward the grinding mass of junk.

  I brace myself against the doorway. Then I clutch at it. It’s as if gravity has shifted, has become a point at the center of the room. I think about black holes, about event horizons, about being liquidized by a tiny point of gravity.

  My feet are off the ground. I grab the door tighter. My fingernails dig into the wood. The curtain tears off the rail above my head. And oh shit, and oh balls, and oh—

  And then the wind drops. I drop, smack down on my knees. And that is going to leave a mark. And the wind has dropped and I still need to formulate my plan of escape.

  Olsted. I have Olsted. A hostage. Yes. That’ll work. I risk a quick glance to survey the landscape before me.

  And I stop. And I stand very still. And now I understand why Olsted kept cats in the room.

  Not for fun. Not for recreational animal abuse. To provide a focus for his spell, his trap. To give things shape.

  There are two... beasts in the center of the room. There’s something feline about them. Something feline and something metal. They’re made out of junk, the junk that filled this room. Scrap-metal tigers standing on thei
r hind legs. Steel sabertooths, walking as men. They shift their massive weight and their joints screech. Rust teeth, knife-blade claws, rebar thighs as thick as my waist. They have tails made of steel bars, twisting and lashing. They leer at me.

  What would Kurt Russell do?

  I have no idea. I really have no idea.

  16

  Just for kicks, I throw the pipe I used to club Olsted at one of them. It bounces off one massive, steel-clad shoulder. It lands, ignored.

  “Shit.” The expletive spills out of me.

  One of the beasts opens its mouth. It seems to go on forever. A throat of wire and rust. Sledgehammer molars. Steak-knife canines. A sound emerges, something between a roar and a burst of static.

  “Balls!”

  I run. There’s nothing else to do. It doesn’t matter that the pipe didn’t work. It’s either die standing or die running. And running feels like doing something. And I can’t run away, so I run at them instead.

  They lurch toward me. Their limbs jerk. As if they’re only just getting used to their bodies. As if the confusion of birth is still on them. It almost feels like a chance.

  One beast jams out its arm, as if to clothesline me, jagged claws poised to take my head off at the neck. I let my feet fall from under me, throwing my legs forward, praying for some momentum, ducking and sliding, a mad limbo to freedom.

  Except the one on my right seems to have remembered how to move. Its foreleg is a blur, and I barely realize what’s happening until I’m lying in a heap on the floor, gasping, my right flank blazing in pain. The thing punches like a jackhammer. I’m not bleeding, but at least one rib must have broken.

  I just about make it to my feet, just about make it one step, two, and then they’re both crouching to jump. The room wavers before me. Three more steps, almost a run.

  Even though I know it’s coming, the leap still comes as a surprise. The speed of it, the ferocity.

  I freeze.

  That saves me—that abrupt failure of my limbs to do as I tell them to do. Some survival instinct bred into the old lizard brain that ignores the idiocy of my higher functions. The beasts fly past me, through the space I was about to occupy. The sound as they crash into each other is like an auto wreck. They tumble, their limbs madly locked, spitting and screeching, a sound like feedback on speakers.

  And suddenly the path between me and the door is open. My limbs come unglued, or just know that now is the time to start cooperating. I’m out into the open-plan living space. White couch. White chairs. Fireplace. Kitchen.

  Where the bloody hell is the door?

  But Clyde. I need to get Clyde. I got him into this. This is all my fault. This is my own idiot fault. Because it’s easy to be a hero when you’re trying to con a couple of scientists out of a hair follicle or two. But when there are genuinely bad people, and genuinely bad things. Shit. People are only heroes in movies. Where it’s fake. Where it’s special effects. Where the blood is glycerine and food dye. Shit.

  I stagger across the living room. Everything’s open-plan. No Clyde. A door. I need to find a door. Any door. Give me a goddamn fucking door. I’m panicking. My eyes are flickering. They can’t rest anywhere. I paw my way along the wall. My hand closes on something. A door handle. This is a door handle. Focus. I can hear metal crashing from beyond the gaping doorway to the grimoire room.

  I pull the door. Nothing. I push. And then I fall. I sprawl through it. Forehead meets floor. I scramble forward in a haze of pain. Kick the door shut. They didn’t see me. Pray they didn’t see me.

  Static scrawls of sound echo from beyond the wall. Still prone, I flip onto my back, stare at the door. Nothing. Metallic footsteps. But the door isn’t torn open. I turn around. I need a way out. I need Clyde and a way out.

  And I have Clyde. There is Clyde. Right there. Staring right at me. Lucky door.

  Except Clyde is gagged and bound, arms and legs wrapped up in silver duct tape, like some half-finished Egyptian mummy. Except there are two dead bodies lying across the floor. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Identical holes punched in their foreheads. Identical brains spilling across the floor. Except there’s a girl. A girl with a gun. A gun pressed to her temple.

  Outside, something lets out an electronic scream.

  No. Not a lucky door.

  17

  “You must be Arthur,” says the girl.

  “I...”

  Clyde’s eyes are almost out of his head. He’s making muffled shrieking sounds from behind the duct tape. I look down at the dead bodies. At the girl. At the gun. Why is the gun to her head? Why would she—

  “I should probably thank you,” she says.

  “Ilsa?” I say. “Ilsa Olsted?” Isn’t Ilsa meant to be bedridden? Doesn’t she have Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease? Isn’t that what the research notes said?

  “I’ve been trying to infect Olsted forever,” she says. She sounds almost bored. “And now you go and bring me a magician of my own, so I don’t even need the old bastard. You’re so kind.”

  Infect? Infect Olsted? And the penny drops.

  “Progeny,” I say. “You’re Progeny.” Ilsa Olsted. Infected. Of course. Of course that makes sense. That’s why the old man is cooperating. He’s over a barrel. And so they get him to plant the book. He does whatever they ask.

  “Not Progeny for much longer,” Ilsa says with a soft smile, almost a dreamy smile. “You, though...”

  The words hang. I remember the cloud of eggs exploding out of the skull of the man in Cowley. I remember Shaw’s words. “Any that land in a nearby individual’s hindbrain will nestle and hatch there.” I look at the gun again. The gun pressed to Ilsa’s temple. Oh shit.

  Ilsa thumbs back the hammer on the gun.

  I’m still lying on my back, looking up at her. I whip my legs around; spin my whole body like a breakdancer. Or an epileptic, depending on your standards.

  Grace, thank God, is not required to tangle Ilsa’s feet. Mine connect with hers and she heads south. Legs out. Arms up. Gun up. She fires. Plaster falls. The shot’s echo rebounds. The gun spills loose.

  I jump for it. I don’t know what I’ll do with it. But it’s a gun. Surely you always go for the gun.

  Ilsa howls. Her hand grabs my ankle. I come up short. I kick back down. Something gives beneath my foot. A crunch. Part horrified. Part glorying. I broke a girl’s nose. But I’m free.

  Something crashes behind me. I spin. Five claws have smashed through the plasterboard of the wall. They scrape sideways, tearing great gashes through the wall. They tear through the door. It falls in two. Gunshots are, apparently, not the best way to keep a low profile.

  The beasts scream in unison. I finally make it to the gun. I spin. Point. Shoot. By some miracle I hit them. Probably because they’re so bloody big.

  The bullets ricochet off them. They don’t slow down.

  “Shit!”

  Ilsa Olsted stands, beaming. A look of rapture on her face.

  “That’s it,” she calls to them. “That’s it. Come to me. Take me apart. Scatter my children.”

  “Shit!”

  I’m back up against the wall, crouching. Clyde is at my feet. He’s screaming behind the duct tape. I pull it from his mouth.

  “The gun!” he shouts. “Give me the gun!”

  “But it’s—”

  “Give it to me!” He looks mad with panic. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I press the gun into a hand taped close to his side.

  One of the beasts punches through what’s left of the door. The next one just punches a path through the wall.

  Gripping the gun awkwardly Clyde fires a shot down the length of his pants. He’s aiming at nothing. Just the wall. An electrical plate shatters.

  An electrical plate.

  One of the beasts lifts a paw and prepares to decapitate Ilsa.

  Clyde grunts and rolls forward. He grabs a wire that spills out of the shattered plate on the wall.

  “Kton achton mal racthon al mannon...”r />
  The scrap-metal tiger with its claw raised freezes. Its limbs grind and scream.

  “...feton mal rannon tel shathal ac rannon...”

  The beast comes apart. Its paw shudders as if struck, and then quite simply, quite gently each constituent part separates itself from all the others, and in a slow-motion explosion, shrapnel drifting lazily through the air, it collapses to the floor.

  From the center of the mess, a tabby cat scampers away.

  The second beast backs away, mewling, something like shock on its face.

  Ilsa turns to stare at us.

  Clyde mutters another word. The duct tape around his arms and legs burns away, disintegrates into ash in a moment. Clyde tosses me the gun. “Your turn,” he says.

  Wait. What? My what?

  I look at the gun in my hands.

  Ilsa is screaming. She is bending down. Grabbing something. A knife. A jagged shard of metal. Some part of the dead tiger. Some weapon. She’s snatching, and screaming, and she’s going to—

  My first shot punches Ilsa back a step. I didn’t even know I’d fired. The gun goes off again. My hands jump. Ilsa reels into the doorway. Two bright roses of blood bloom on her chest. She stumbles over scrap metal, wavers, clutches at the frame. Not dead. She’s still holding the metal. Still... I have to shoot her again. Oh shit. Oh fuck. I have to...

  I close my eyes. I fire. Open my eyes.

  The bullet takes the top of Ilsa’s head off, opens her like a can. Blood sprays straight up, like a fountain.

  “No!” A scream. A sound dragged out of a man. I look up and see—beyond the corpse, beyond the mewling scrap-metal tiger, in the doorway to the grimoire room—Olsted, bruised and bloody and horror-struck as he watches his daughter die.

  In the wound in Ilsa’s head I can see the Progeny thrashing. Tendrils whip the air, sprouting from around the beak-like mouth. A white, segmented body. A maggot’s body with a thousand short legs spasming in the air.

  I wait for the eggs. The white spray of alien young. I wait for confirmation that the thing is dead. I wait to see if Clyde and I are out of range.