by Rob Aspinall
I heard robodog stomp right, towards the remains of the staircase. A long timber beam fell from the ceiling, kicking up a cloud of black ash that cast the room in fresh darkness, the dog firing at the collapsing debris, spooked by the sudden movement. There was no time for a discussion. While the drone’s back was turned, we darted out low and grabbed the spears and shields. The sound of the gunfire obliterated the scraping of the shields and spears off the floor. We made a run for it over to the kitchen and took cover behind the island, my left arm already aching from the weight of the ancient weaponry.
Hunting spears and shields against robot hellhounds. I didn’t fancy our chances. Philippe crouched down behind the right side of the kitchen island nearest the front door. Me to the left. He pointed at me. Then out into the living area where the dog was. He held his shield up against his face and made a small action with his spear, as if throwing it. Who, me? Throw a spear? Had he seen me throw? I’d once tried to throw a tennis ball back to some lads at school. It ended up wazzing off sideways and smacking the head teacher in the eye. And there was the time I’d tried to hurl a bowling ball down an alley and thrown it backwards. It landed on Ben Fielding’s foot. It kept him out of the school rugby final and I got the blame. So forgive me if I didn’t feel terribly confident. Philippe continued his little game of charades, pointing to himself and mimicking the same actions. I peeped out from behind the island. The dog was turning around, picking its way over a pile of loose debris into the living area. Before I could object, Philippe counted down with his fingers.
Three.
This was a bad idea.
Two.
The worst since socks and sandals.
One.
And, as always, I was on the poo-stained end.
I took a deep breath and stood up from behind the island, exposed. I hurled the spear as far and as well as I could.
Predictably, I missed. The spear got about halfway across the room before it swan dived straight into the sofa, a pathetic plume of sponge spitting up into the air. The dog spun and bathed me in blue laser. I was blasted back off my feet against the kitchen drawers by the force of the bullets doing their best to smash their way through my shield.
The dense metal of the shield just about soaked the bullets up, but I felt like my arm was about to snap off at the wrist. Philippe rose from his position like a pro hunter from ancient whenever times. He wound his arm back and launched the spear at eye-blinking speed across the room. It arrowed straight and true, punching a hole through the dusty, smoky air. The dog sensed it coming too late. The sharp metal tip of the spear landed hard and deep in its side, rocking the dog sideways. Electrical sparks fizzed and flew, the dog’s feet dancing randomly on the spot. A pod opened up on its side, the tip of a missile visible, ready to annihilate the pair of us. But it wouldn’t launch. The thing was well and truly on the fritz. Philippe ran over to the dog and yanked side to side on the spear, maximising the damage. The dog clicked and buzzed and smoked and powered down. Philippe tugged hard on the spear, one foot against the drone’s body. He pulled it free, picked up his shield and signalled for me to move with him. I liberated my weapon from the sofa and joined him, each of us covering both sides of the doorway.
One down. One to go.
22
Takedown
Death dog number two stood to the front left of the barn, waiting for us to come running out. It couldn’t see us inside the swirling, smoking gloom of the building. But out in the clear daylight, it was a sitting duck. Philippe broke out of his hiding spot and drew back his arm. He dispatched the spear in another Herculean throw. I waited for the tip to lodge firmly in the dog’s side and send it to sleep. Only, this time, the dog reacted just fast enough. All four legs folded and it dropped belly to the floor. The spear was an inch too high, skidding off the gravel driveway. The dog stood up. Philippe was out in the open. He hurled the shield towards it, drawing its fire. Enough to give him a head start around the side of the barn, drone and bullets in hot pursuit.
I had to do something, or Philippe would be dog food and I’d be up next. I didn’t even think. I just reacted, dropping the shield and running back into the house. With spear in hand, I ran all the way up the collapsed roof beam that had fallen against the first-floor landing and formed an impromptu ramp. I leapt over the hole in the floor and sprinted into what used to be the master bedroom, nothing more than chewed-up flooring sloping down at a forty-five-degree angle over the back of the house. I could hear the bullets flying. Hear the hooves galloping. Hear Philippe’s feet scrambling across the gravel below. I went with the sloping floorboards, dropping into a fast slide on my bum, holding the spear tip down across my body with both hands. As I whizzed off the edge, Philippe passed underneath, quick as a greyhound, a step and a turn ahead of the bullets chun-chun-chunning after him, the dog not built for agility. It was a scary old fall beneath me. I needed to time this right. I did, dropping dead centre over the dog as it barrelled along after Philippe. With both hands gripping the spear, I drove it deep into the dog’s back. As spear hit drone, the sudden jolt threw me clear onto the ground and flipped the machine over onto its side. I rolled over onto the gravel behind the barn as Philippe skidded to a stop. He doubled back as the dog struggled to right itself, legs kicking out, trying to get some traction on the ground, its guns cut dead mid-fire. Philippe reached under its belly and flicked a switch. The dog’s legs stopped kicking. Smoked poured out of the poor, terrifying thing. It was done.
“Thanks,” Philippe said, breathing heavy. “Nice move.”
“Piece of piss,” I said, pretending like it was nothing.
We stood and got our breath back for a moment. Then we both twigged. The dog handlers! By the time we got around front, the silver Transit was high-tailing it out of there.
“We don’t have long,” Philippe said, as we trudged back to the barbecued ruins of the barn.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I said.
“We’ll take the Golf,” Philippe said.
Through ears still ringing from the battle, I heard wheels on the driveway, pulling up behind us. A white courier van with yellow lettering on the side. The driver climbing out in a matching uniform and cap, mouth gaping open as he surveyed the damage. His eyes wandered over to Philippe, standing with a spear in hand.
“Ooh, goody,” I said. “Our stuff is here.”
23
Duty Free
Berlin Tegel Airport.
Busy.
Modern.
International.
We entered through the same door, from different directions.
Me, back in my rich globetrotting guise of Katerina Alaverdy. A chic black pencil dress, matching shoes and my trusty Gucci shades. Hair clipped up tight to my head. Freshly showered and changed in an airport hotel.
I pulled a charcoal carry-on case behind me across a buffed grey concourse. Philippe walked a good distance behind, dressed in a dark suit and Italian leather shoes, a white shirt, black tie and a set of trendy, fake-lens spectacles, wheeling a carry-on of his own. Business people travel light, he’d told me. And for the purposes of our little trip to sunny Venezuela, I was a marketing intern working for an international coffee company. Philippe was Rodrigo Vela. He worked in petroleum.
It was my first time at an airport. There was a tinge of excitement, somewhere, buried under ten tonnes of fear. For starters, I’d never realised airports were such scary places. Armed police strolled along in twos. There was a check-in to get through. Then we’d have to go through security. And, after that, an additional passport control that was apparently common practice due to global terror.
With all this beefed-up security, were JPAC watching us right now? Had they tipped off airport security and police? The thought squatted heavily on my mind like a sumo wrestler. What if Nathan and Friends had taken a look at my passport in the barn?
Check-in was first. I looked at the flight number on the e-ticket and matched it to a queue between two blue cordons.
Philippe was to queue behind me to make sure I got through.
The woman at the check-in desk wore a serious face and too much makeup.
She beckoned me forward. “Ticket and passport.”
I removed my shades and handed my documents over, trying my best to look utterly disinterested.
“Forget about Lorna Walker,” Philippe had told me on the way to the airport. “You’re Katerina now.”
“I know. I’ve been her before. But it’s hard to act like Katerina when I’m shitting my knickers.”
“Don’t act like her. Be her.”
“What do you mean? How do you be someone you’re not?”
“Think of it this way,” he’d said. “What’s Katerina’s biggest worry?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Um, boredom?”
“And what’s she looking forward to most about the trip?”
“The beaches. The weather. Working on her tan.”
“And what’s her general opinion of herself?”
“She’s mega-confident,” I said. “A rich bitch. She fancies herself as a bit of a super-model, even though she’s not.”
“And I bet she has zero fear around anyone. Airport security, for instance.”
“Oh, yeah, don’t get her started. She doesn’t like anyone who tells her to take her shoes off. It makes her look shorter and dumpier.”
“First-class passengers shouldn’t have to endure such impositions,” Philippe said.
“Yeah, right? It’s degrading. It’s for cattle class.”
“There you go,” he said. “You know exactly who you are.”
“I’m Katerina. I’m rich, beautiful and you can all suck on my awesome.”
The bravura had worn off a bit since then. I had to force myself to look the check-in woman in the eye and not smile nervously. She handed me my passport and boarding pass.
“Have a nice flight.”
“Danke.”
I moved on, glancing over my shoulder only briefly. Philippe had put a couple of passengers between me and him in the line. I strolled off towards airport security, cool as a set jelly. Then realised I was going the wrong way and strode back on myself.
Security was brutally thorough. Cosmetics and toiletries had to be in a clear bag. And, yes, I had to take my shoes off. I huffed and puffed as I did it, letting it be known that I was above this kind of thing without striking up an argument. I dumped my shiny black business heels in a tray with a thump. Sashayed through the metal detector with my nose in the air. Waited for my bag and tray with arms folded, examining a fingernail, doing my best to look bored. Inside, I was like a kitten with its head in a lion’s mouth. Any moment, it could bite down.
But it didn’t. The lion left me alone. I moved on to passport control. Again, Philippe a couple of people behind, waltzing through the metal detector like he owned it.
Okay, Lorn. One more step and we’re through to the promised land.
It was a two-man team awaiting me on the other side of the passport booth glass. Glum and Glummer. I handed Glummer my passport. He stared at me. Stared at the passport. At me. At the passport. I just about held his gaze.
“What’s the purpose of your trip?” he asked, holding the passport open under some kind of laser scanner.
This is where I was supposed to say either business or pleasure. I got caught in two minds.
“Pusiness,” I said in my mock Italian English. “I mean, bleasure … I mean, both. I’m in coffee.”
Good God, woman, stop rambling!
“You’re in coffee?” he asked, without looking up.
“I’m an intern,” I said, remembering to look thoroughly inconvenienced.
“Both pusiness and bleasure,” Glummer said, rubbing in my mistake. He looked at me one last time and handed my passport back. “Enjoy the coffee.”
I snatched my passport out of his hand and strutted off with my case, my scar twitching under my dress from the subwoofer beats coming from my heart. I guess I got my answer. Smugorella hadn’t bothered to delve into my bag while I was out of it on the way to the barn.
Slack, Smugorella, slack.
I stopped in the middle of departures, scanning a screen overhead for our gate number.
“We made it. Follow me,” Philippe whispered as he passed me by with his case. I took that as a sign to relax. I let him walk on a little, like I hadn’t noticed him, then grabbed my case and followed his long stride along the concourse. I was happily keeping a safe distance when I passed by a store that caught my eye. Duty Free.
Oh yeah. You go on ahead, Philippe. I’ll catch up.
I wheeled my case in around the aisles, wondering what to buy first. A bag of peanut M&Ms was top of the wish-list. I found something even better. A big tube of them, with a red M&Ms man sitting on the top. I lobbed it in a basket and moved on. Next up, a mix of German snacks and a trip down the perfume aisle. I sprayed a few different ones on my wrist and gave them a sniff. Not buying, of course. Even though I had the money now, I was still in the habit of trying to get things for free, or asking Auntie Claire to shout me the money. I turned around to ask, as if expecting her to be standing behind me, tutting. I closed my eyes, counted to three and thought of something nice. Becki, on this occasion. Her elbow touching mine in French. Her coral-green eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun.
By the time I got to three, the trembling in my hands had gone. It was a new tactic I’d come up with to deal with the loss of Auntie Claire. The faces of the people I’d killed. The faces of the people Philippe had killed. And all the other shit I’d been through recently. In fact, any loud bang or crash tended to set me on edge. Trigger a flashback. Make my body think someone was shooting at me. The memories wounded me like bullets. And the thing about bullets, they were hard to remove. They could break into pieces and burrow deep inside you, turning your insides black …
Okay, morbid time over. I followed the light of the shiny things in the jewellery and watch section. Swarovski, Pandora, Omega, all twinkling under the bright display lights. They distracted me for the time being. Still, the thought of Nathan. Magda. Ginger Bun. Range Rover Bitch. Shadow Man. All of them. JPAC’s crew were out there, putting guns to innocent heads and pulling the trigger. Pulling the strings too. The first Black Flag Protocol was only a day and a few miles away. And I’d probably hear about it on the plane, before we even touched down on the tarmac of Caracas. It gnawed away at me from the inside, like a rat trapped inside my stomach.
I bought myself a bright-yellow Swatch to cheer myself up. It didn’t fit with Katerina’s image, but what the hell? We were almost on the plane. I came out of the Duty Free store with a couple of red plastic bags full of stuff. I made the long walk towards our boarding gate, passing a dozen other shops on the way. I felt the pull of each one.
No, Lorna. Stay on the concourse. Focus on the mission.
I found the boarding gate area. We were early, so only a few passengers were waiting. And no sign of Philippe. Must have gone to the toilet. I sat down and waited. I felt the row of thinly padded grey seats shake under the weight of a man plonking himself down behind me.
“Where the hell have you been?” I heard him whisper in my ear. I half-turned. It was Philippe.
“I’ve been searching everywhere,” he said. “I thought you’d been snatched.”
“I thought you said we’d made it.”
“Past security,” Philippe said. “JPAC could still have eyes on the place.”
“I was in Duty Free,” I said. I reached down and pulled one of the bags up onto my knee. “Look,” I said, turning in my seat.
“Don’t talk directly to me,” Philippe said. “We’re fleeing the country, not going on holiday.”
“Fine, then you won’t want your present.”
I faced front-ways, put the bag down and admired my new watch.
“Okay, what is it?” Philippe whispered.
I smiled to myself and lifted a Scotch bottle halfway out of the bag for him to see. I’d b
ought it using the new passport that said I was eighteen – something I’d insisted on when Giles was emailing Fingar with the details.
“That’s my favourite,” Philippe said, eyeing the neck of the bottle.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m an awesome gift giver. Always have been.”
Truth is, it was my new favourite too. I’d bought it for myself. But if it kept Sir Moanalot quiet …
The wait for the flight was boring. I should have bought a book from the shop and it was too far a walk back.
The fins of passenger planes glided left and right past the huge glass windows sloping outwards. People chatted in German and Spanish. Some tucking into airport sandwiches. Others reading newspapers. Or barking at their spawn to stop running or complaining or banging on the seats or pulling one another’s hair. At first, I’d been fidgety. Checking the time on my new watch. Checking the screen to see if the flight had been called and we’d missed it.
“They’ll call it on the PA system,” Philippe said under his breath, sensing my nervousness. “Relax.”
So I relaxed. Probably too much.
“I’m going to get some water,” Philippe said. “You want some?”
“Please,” I said. “Make it still. I can’t do sparkling.”
“Keep an eye on my case,” Philippe said, shoving it beneath the seats so that it knocked up against the heels of my shoes.
He strode off down the long, long concourse until he blended into the background, as if he was a ghost. I closed my eyes and listened to the gentle whoosh and rumble of airplanes taking off. Almost hypnotic.
24
Ghost Train
I sat on a little white stool while Changing Room Girl pranced around naked, singing “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls. Ginger Bun’s corpse rose up off the floor, the colour of blueberries. It contorted and cracked, doing a reverse crab to the song as if demonically possessed. Before I could record it on my phone, the scenery shifted and suddenly I was in the Trafford Centre food court, burger in hand. As I took a bite, I heard a tiny scream from inside the bun. I felt a crunch between my teeth, spindly little legs and feet kicking. I spat out tiny yellow feathers and looked down at the mess in my hands. A little deep-fried chick, still alive, tiny eyes and beak popping out through the batter.
