The head was mine. The pistol was Cardinal Cy's.
"Fuck." I said.
"Yeah," he said.
Nobody moved.
"How did you find me?"
"On the way up. Heard a shot. Took it nice and slow."
Opening the filing cabinet. Bugger.
Still the same, strange voice. Little stammered bursts of thought, tones just a touch too high for comfort.
"Given us a chase. Haven't you? Troublemaker. Caused all sorts."
"What's on the roof?" I said. Stalling. It didn't matter. He had no reason to keep me alive now. Just showboating. Just being curious. Just playing with me.
"No concern." He said. "What you looking for? Up here, huh? What's got you into this?"
"None of your business," I deadpanned.
He punched me in the kidneys, giggling horribly and as I went down I made it look good, cried out, and staggered, and threw up my hand to ward him off, letting the photo of John-Paul flap about, and – and in the confusion sneaked my other hand onto the Uzi in my pocket, and – and the gun was back on my scalp, only this time I was kneeling.
"Fuck."
"Hands. Lemee see. On head."
He giggled again. Not right in the head.
I did what he said. The Uzi clattered to the ground beside the photo of John-Paul, and somewhere behind those impenetrable red specs I guess he snatched a glance.
"That who I think?"
"Yeah."
"Looks young."
"Yeah."
"What you doing here?"
"Looking for something."
"What?"
"Information."
"What information?"
"You really want to know?"
"What information? Fuck! What information?" The muzzle jabbed against my temple.
I sighed.
Tensed.
"I'm after the location of a secret UN funded research-team sent to find a…"
And I struck. Always mid-sentence. Always unexpected.
Turned. Arms swiping across the pistol muzzle. Knocking it to one side.
He got off a shot – angry and loud and shocking in the silence – and the muzzleflash vanished in the wrong direction, and I was standing and snarling, and then wrestling with the gun between us, and oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…
He was laughing.
He was stronger than me.
The gun came up slowly like the sunrise outside, like a perfect black 'O' opening to swallow me, and I pushed and fought and put everything into it, and Don't you fucking give up soldier!
Sir, no sir! Etc etc.
– and it still wasn't enough.
Hooked a leg behind his knee. Tipped us up. Rolling on the floor. Grunting, dribbling, spitting, sweating. The cords in his neck stood out like ropes, and still he wasn't going to stop laughing, the bastard, still he was giggling like his sides had bust.
He took a hand off the pistol, and for a second I thought I'd won. Redoubled my efforts. Forced everything I had into snapping his wrist.
But it made no difference, and he was still laughing, and he was still stronger than me.
With all the time in the world, he picked up my own rifle in his spare hand – fat fist wrapped round the muzzle – and hit me so hard on the head that my teeth rattled, my lips went cold, my eyes burned with a sudden whiteness then faded back to an awful half-gloom, and the sound that reached my ears shivered around inside my empty skull like an endless echo.
Still laughing. Standing over me, gun in hand.
Still laughing in between telling me he's going to shoot off my kneecaps and let the Abbot have his fun. Spitting on my forehead. Warm rain.
Still laughing when he aimed the pistol and took a breath.
Still laughing when the blurred shape that had been creeping up behind him for the past thirty seconds – tall and dark, dappled with stripes and patches in blue and red – swatted his wrist to one side, ignored the spastic misfire of the pistol, and jabbed a hunting knife so hard into his skull that it slid inside with a crack and stayed there.
And then he stopped laughing, the shit.
Which is about when I lost consciousness, and went skidding off into my own head.
From somewhere, the sounds of engines. Big engines. A lot of engines.
People were shouting ("They're going! They're getting out! Stop them!"), guns were chattering like woodpeckers in a distant forest, and two voices were arguing.
"Fuck were you doing?"
"You mind your business, man! The hell are you, anyways?"
"What's in the pack? Hey! Hey, I'm talking to you!"
"You back off, Tonto!"
"What did you call m…"
And so on.
Oh, and an ugly throb of motorised something, slinking off into silence.
…thrpthrpthrpthrp…
I didn't even bother opening my eyes. It was all too much trouble.
"I had a kid." She said. "That's all."
She was beautiful, I suppose, in a stretched-out way. Gangly almost, but not clumsy. Not my type, but I could appreciate her. With little beads of sweat catching the fire on her compact little breasts, and her legs sort of wrapped over-then-under mine, any man could.
The sex had been… okay. Nice.
A little awkward, maybe. Heart-not-quite-in-it, but…yeah. Nice.
"They took her last year. Just turned five. I hid out for months, moving about. Eventually some small-town fuckwit sold me out for a bottle of meths and a new shirt. I kicked his bloody teeth in, when I could walk again."
I pressed my nose against her hair. It smelt of dirt and damp and woman.
Oho, the guilt…
"You're lucky they didn't kill you," I said. "The Clergy. Not big fans of tithe-dodgers."
"Nah." Her shoulders shrugged against my chest. "Why bother? Another woman left alive, another baby-machine to spit out more brain-dead bible-thumpers."
Then quiet. She was a deep-breather and didn't fidget quite as much as As some people do.
"Who was the father?" I said, trying to sound interested. In truth the guilt was eating me up, chewing on my stupid prick-controlled-brain and cursing the nettle brandy (or whatever the hell it was) I'd been drinking all night.
Not that I wasn't interested in what she had to say, exactly. Just that I'd heard it – or something like it – a hundred times before. Just that I had my own worries.
Shit, five years since The Cull it was still a selfish motherfucking world.
"No one," she said, and her voice said otherwise. "Just some… guy."
"Before The Cull, right?"
"Yeah. Year or so. Prick." She sighed and nuzzled her way backwards until her bum was squidged up against my groin, and pulled the blanket we'd found tighter round herself "Seemed like he knew everything, at the start. Smart guy, capable. Knew everyone.
"You get to feel like you're safe with someone like that. You know? I mean, Jesus… I was only… what? Twenty one? Living on the street. Spoilt rotten as a kid, I was. Ponies, swimming pools, four-by-fours, you name it. Thus the flying lessons. Got bored of that too. Same as anything."
I was already tuning out. I know, I know. I'm scum. "I only got halfway through uni," she said, building up momentum for an entire bloody life-story. "Had a bit of a… hiccup. Took a look at myself. All the money, the materials. Probably got a bit too far into the whole student thing, if I'm honest. Just kind of… backflipped. Dropped off the radar. Wound up on the streets, getting by. That's where I met Claystone."
"That's the father?"
"Yeah. And then the baby came. A-and… and give him his credit, you know…he hung around. Brought in some money, once in a while. Knew who to ask, get favours. Fingers in all sorts of pies. We got ourselves a little place, no questions asked – proper little family. Even tried to clean ourselves up. Stop using, y'know?"
I tangled a finger through the ringlets of hair next to her ear, then realised what I was doing and stopped. All these little betrayals,
all these guilty little things.
If she noticed, she didn't show it.
"Then The Cull."
"He died?" I said.
She laughed, bitter.
"No. No, he didn't die. Stuck about for a while. Just long enough to see little Shayla hit one. Went out every day for food and togs, came back… now and then.
"Then one day he just didn't come back at all. Left a note. 'Couldn't handle the responsibility'. Prick."
More quiet.
"Sodding cliche, ain't it?" She said. I jerked back awake, realising I'd been slipping off.
"What?"
"Single mother, whingeing on."
"Yeah. Maybe. Though it's kind of different when you can't just nip to the local supermarket for nappies."
"Exactly. Anyway." She shrugged again. "We survived. Me and Shayla."
"And Claystone?"
"Pfft. Saw him about, once or twice. Heard about him all the time. Everyone knew Claystone. He worked for everyone, sooner or later. Had a way of… of finding the best groove. Like… things got tough, he knew a comfier slot. Gold fucking medallist at living an easy life."
Her voice dripped bitterness.
"But he never came looking for me. Vanished, eventually. Wound up in the river for all I know. All I care.
"Prick. Prick! Well shot of him."
Somewhere outside the pub's shattered windows, a fox loped by with its weird baby-scream call. Bella shivered.
"You know what it's like, when your whole world is focused on one thing?"
I scowled, uncomfortable with the thought. "Yeah." I decided. "Yeah, suppose I do."
"And then six men in robes come one day and take it away from you, and kick the crap out of you into the bargain, and put things in your mouth, and tell you to behave and do what you're told, then scuttle off into the night. And then you hear that thing – that… that centre of your universe – get loaded aboard a plane and fucked-off to Yankland.
"What then, mate? What do you do then?"
I didn't answer.
We lay like that for a long time, and I could tell from her breathing she wasn't asleep.
Eventually she mumbled:
"Doesn't matter. Not your problem. But that's why I'm going."
I was already asleep, and heard it only on the fringes of a dream.
I woke up, and almost shat.
There was a face about a foot from my eyes; curved nose sharp like the edge of a scimitar, mouth tugged down at each corner, lost across a jutting chin to a network of weather-lines. Its hair – long, perfectly dark – was trussed-up in loops of red and yellow PVC-tape, so it stood upright like a tower then spilled down on either side to box me in.
From the hairline to the bottom of the eye sockets, the man was black. Not just Afro-Caribbean black, but black like ink, pressed-up tight against dark eyes that shimmered inside their puddle of shadow. But below the eyes – face bisected in a straight horizontal line across the bridge of the nose and down each angular cheekbone – the man's skin was tanned a ruddy red. He looked savage. He looked terrifying.
He looked like an ancient God of war (or rather, how I assumed an ancient God of war might look, never having met one), and in the fuzzy moments of half waking, with my whole head throbbing from the sharp pain in my scalp, I remembered the wax figures in their diorama displays in the museum, and wondered if one of them had come back to teach me a lesson for using him as a decoy.
The only detail that somewhat spoilt this scowling character's prehistoric spectacle, was the head-to-foot biking leathers in blue, black, red and white.
"He's awake." The effigy proclaimed, rising up and away from me. At a distance, he stopped being the most terrifying thing I've ever seen, and became a young man wearing face paint. I relaxed my sphincter.
"What? You what?" A familiar voice. I felt myself smiling, happy at the note of familiarity in the midst of all this oddity. Nate appeared on the edge of my vision like a man possessed, pushing the boy aside and stooping down to poke and prod at me. He was no longer sweating or shivering; a total transformation that left him grinning massively and mumbling to himself.
"Ow," I said, as he pressed his crinkled fingers against my temple. He did it again.
"Miracle." He said, grinning, cigarette hanging off his bottom lip. "That's what it is. Damned miracle. Asshole all but opened you up."
He tittered to himself.
I picked myself up slowly, fighting the urge to vomit every inch of the way. My head felt like a meteor had hit it – or possibly a speeding elephant – and judging by the dry tightness of my cheek it was appropriately blood-splattered. Added to the bandaged remains of what had once been an ear, the slashes and scars across cheeks and forehead, the aching wounds – messily fixed-up – in my left arm, right shoulder and nape of my neck, I imagined I was starting to look just as patchworked as my coat. One of these days, I decided, I was going to have to find a functioning shower.
I tottered to my feet, lost the battle with my gyrating inner-ear, and barfed like a trooper. I was hungry enough to consider asking someone for a spoon.
Nate watched me cautiously, like he expected me to fall down any second. His pupils looked even bigger than usual, pushing against the bright whites of his eyes, and he was clinging to a red plastic box – like a power drill case – like it was a lifeline. Where he'd got it and what the hell it was were queries I never got around to asking. My surroundings swam into focus, and my senses came online.
The prevailing sound was: engines.
I was back at the Wheels Mart. The same raggedy little tent, by the looks of it, that Malice met me in before. Through the tattered openings I could hear the braying crowds and see the spastic danglings of the MC, shouting out his endless stream of nonsensical bid-acceptances. The smell of cooking meat underwritten by the heady chug of noxious fumes, the whooping and arguing of punters. It made my head hurt, if possible, even more than it already did.
"Brought you here in a car!" Nate whooped, doing a little dance. He was clearly on something. "Borrowed it, yes we did. Fucking Clergy, heh!"
"What… what happened?" I murmured, wincing at my own voice. "What happened to the priests?"
"Fucked off!" Nate sat down suddenly, cross-legged, and nodded like a flapping wing. "Trucks, hidden-away. Took-off all at once. You scared 'em off! City's free!"
Then he slumped against the wall of the tent with no warning and just… switched off, smirking. He dribbled a little.
High as a kite.
Hmm.
The young man in the leathers stood nearby, leaning against a tall wooden pole, arms folded; watching it all without movement. I found myself looking for the bow and quiver of arrows over his shoulder – hating myself – and dipped my eyes back up to his own to cover the up-and-down staring.
He didn't move a muscle.
"You saved me, huh?" I said, remembering the red and blue blur behind Cy, the knife cracking through his skull.
He shrugged. "You needed saving."
Nate tsked quietly behind me, then giggled again.
I held out a shaky hand to the boy, which he took with a suspicious sort of glance and shook firmly.
"Hiawatha," he said.
I nodded. "Pleasure. Want to tell me what you were doing on the thirty fourth floor of a hotly-contested building swarming with insane priests, Hiawatha?"
He smiled. Sort of. I don't think there was much humour there.
"Saving you." he said.
Uh-huh.
Which is around about when Malice came in. Different.
She looked bigger, for a start. It took me a while to figure she wore body armour beneath the black threads. Pointy football-pads over each shoulder, skateboarding shields on elbows and knees, and a bloody enormous anti-stab vest that made her look like a samurai. Guns and knives poking from belts and straps on every conceivable surface – and that included the baby's wicker support-cage, still humping from her back like a dorsal fin.
She looked li
ke an ice hockey player who was too hardcore to bother with a helmet.
Oh, and someone had beaten the shit out of her.
"Still alive then," she said, not even bothering to make eye contact. She sounded disappointed, dumping an angular bag on the floor with a metallic crash.
"Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess." I tried to stop staring at her bruised face. "What happened?"
She rummaged industriously in a couple of crates nearby, then paused to glower at me. "Clergy happened, retard. You're a popular guy."
I suppose I should've guessed. Back before The Tag and the siege and all that, when Cy dragged the big Mickey-chief back to the UN with tales of the Limey psycho driving about on a clapped-out quad. Wouldn't have taken the Choirboys long to work their way back to the Wheels Mart.
I wondered whether she'd told them anything worth a damn.
"Sorry," I said.
"Skip it. We're ready to roll when you are."
"Excuse me?"
"We're loaded-up and ready. Awaiting your pleasure, your majesty. And payment, of course."
"Sorry, I'm… I'm not with you…"
"I said," Nate grumbled. "Didn't I say? Let him wake up, I said! Just goddamn wait! Let him decide himself!"
Malice ignored him, hooking a thumb towards Hiawatha. "Last of the Mohicans here said you'd want a ride. Long distance. Heavy protection. No expense spared."
Hiawatha stared at me.
"But…"
"North-west," Malice said. "That's what he told me. You saying he's been wasting my fucking time?"
She didn't look in the mood for games.
I groped in my pocket and felt the crumpled sheet of paper I'd taken from the Secretariat with its REASSIGNMENT LOCATION and the smooth photograph. Undisturbed, right where I'd left them.
I stared at Hiawatha.
"How did you know that?" I said, off-balance. "What's…how… how did you know?"
"Lucky guess," he said, then turned back to Malice, pointing a finger at the bag she'd brought with her. "That's mine."
"And?"
"They confiscated it at the door."
"And now I'm bringing it back Tonto. Keep your fucking scalp o…"
"No, I mean… I mean you might as well keep it. It's for you anyway."
He strolled over and kicked open the drawstrings, letting dozens upon dozens of glossy guns – rifles, pistols, autos, semis, weird spiky things I didn't recognise and antique bloody revolvers – spill into the dirt.
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