Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  Coldwater, having snapped out of her shock fugue, had stripped the mattress and blankets off the next bed and now with Cloves, she shoved it laboriously towards us. In a matter of moments, we had barricaded the doors, hearing the creatures slam repeatedly and furiously into the opposite side.

  With a moment’s reprieve, I glanced around the small room, trying not to look too closely at Scott’s victims. We had to find another way out of here. There were no other doors. I had been right. Back when this was a power-plant, this room had clearly been some kind of supply area. One way in, one way out. And only one window. Shit.

  “Stay away from there,” Coldwater said as I approached it, thinking if we could get it open somehow we might be able to shimmy down the outside. Seemed unlikely, we were three stories up, but with the Pale at our heels, I’d risk it. Hell, if the window was the only way out and the Pale got through our barricade, I’d jump and do a flip.

  Before I could question Coldwater’s warning, I crossed in front of the window and it shattered immediately in a hail of bullets. I fell away from the glass, throwing myself across the wall as bullets poured in through the shattered frame, burying themselves like angry bees in the far wall. The deafening onslaught lasted a full ten seconds, peppering the room with lead as everyone but Kane, shielded by the bed frames, threw themselves prone on the floor.

  “Drones,” Coldwater said a little shakily, once the automatic gunfire had stopped. She raised her head slightly from the floor, looking at the rest of us. Her face was smudged with dust. “Don’t you remember? Scott told us he’d reactivated them. Hoverer I imagine. Every single drone on this site is armed against us now.”

  I stared over her head at the far wall, it was covered in blackened bullet holes.

  “They are probably trained on every window in this building, looking for movement.” She pursed her lips. “And to think I approved the bill to automate sites like these. There’s irony for you.”

  “Well,” I gasped shakily, brushing glass dust out of my hair. “We’re not getting out that way then. Everyone stay away from the window.”

  “We’re not getting out any which way,” Cloves said, getting up off the floor and dusting off her front, careful to stay to the side of the now shattered window pane. “Leatherboy Lazarus, how much do you have left in that clip?”

  Chase checked his gun grimly. “One,” he said. “And I’ve killed eight of them.”

  “Which means there are four Pale left out there, clawing to get in and we have one bullet between us.” She sighed shakily. “We are truly fucked.” She shot me a look. “Remind me to bow out of any of your future field trips, Harkness.”

  “This will not hold long,” Kane grunted, pushing the metal barricade of the beds against the doors. “They are too strong, and they are destroying the doors themselves to get in at us.”

  It was true, I could hear their claws working, slashing at the already rotten wood. They were digging their way through. One Pale on its own in this room, maybe, if we were lucky, and wonder boy executioner Chase was as good a shot as he seemed, we’d be okay. But four of them? I hated to admit it, but I had to agree with Cloves. We had no chance.

  “We could always dig out some of the drone bullets spattering that wall and throw them at the Pale,” I said, sounding not quite as calm and glib as I’d intended.

  “This is a dead end,” Chase said looking around the room as he got to his feet. “In every sense of the word. An extremely, very dead, end. Even if there was another way out of this room, other than back through the Pale, there’s nowhere to go. We so much as step near a door or window and the drones out there in the courtyard will blow us to pieces. We need to wait it out here, see if these things get tired.”

  “We don’t have time to wait it out, young man,” Coldwater said. She seemed to have regained a little more of her self-control, although she was still as white as a sheet. “In less than half an hour, that madman is going to annihilate two thirds of the city’s population.”

  “On your bankroll,” Chase pointed out, waggling his gun at her casually. “Bit of a blunder there, eh? Good to see the common sense running of Cabal hasn’t changed since my day. And don’t call me ‘young man’. I’m older than you, darling.”

  “She’s right,” I interjected. We didn’t have time for finger-pointing. “We can’t just sit here, we have to try to stop him. Scott’s going for genocide. Even the most hardcore of the Mankind Movement wouldn’t agree to this, surely. We can’t let this happen.”

  “How are we meant to stop it?” Cloves said. “Even without shooty metal robot death and hungry mutant zombie death out there, unless you have a jetpack hidden on your person, Harkness, there’s no way to get back to the city in time.”

  “I’m not leaving here without my daughter,” Kane said grimly, challenging us all with a stare.

  “Maybe we can’t get back to the city in time,” I admitted to Cloves. “But even if we can just make it to the tunnels, to the tramcar, we might be able to get a strong enough signal to call, to warn them. Scott’s signal jamming might only extend to this site. I can call Griff or Lucy, get word to Cabal. To stop Scott before he detonates his dirty-bomb.” I glanced at Chase. “Unless you actually do have a jetpack?” I said hopefully. I wouldn’t have put it past him.

  He shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, I followed your fun pack here,” he said. “I couldn’t get through the blast doors without the code. Ingenious bit of sleuthing there.”

  “We have to try,” I said, staring at them all.

  “If we open those doors, we can’t take on four of those monsters at once,” Coldwater said. “I’ve seen footage in the Cabal archives. I’ve seen just one of them take down a heavily armed squad of ten in full body armour. They were designed to kill. Thank people like Scott and your own father for that, Doctor. The Sentinels were strong before they went mad. As the Pale, they’re death on legs. They will tear through us like wet tissue paper.”

  We all stared hopelessly at one another for a few seconds.

  Kane sighed. “Tissue paper…you maybe,” he said. “Not me.” He looked back to me. “Doctor, if I can hold off the Pale, you need to get through the room, back to the corridor where we entered. Get downstairs.” He shook his head “…I do not know, maybe there is another way back to the tunnels, or a landline still working somewhere in the building you can use. Something Scott missed.”

  “That corridor has drones positioned sentry,” I said. “Chase saw them.”

  “I’ll deal with any drones we meet,” Chase said. “I can cover you, sweetness, draw their fire.” He smirked. “Trust me, I can make a far more entertaining target than you. You move too slowly to be any real fun.”

  “Cover her?” Cloves snorted. “With what? Your corpse? You have one bullet, genius.”

  He gave her a sardonic look. “It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been shot to death,” he said. “It’s not as big a deal as you’d imagine.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Coldwater asked, a little worried. “Servant Cloves and me, and the poor Tribal girl? We can’t just stay here. You’re not going to just abandon us?”

  I considered it was what she deserved. Kane stared at her a while. I could feel the distrust he held for humans, and especially for Cabal, rolling off him.

  “Close up the door behind us,” he said. “If I cannot kill all of the Pale, if they overpower me, they will chase the Doctor and this strange man who smells like a Christmas cake. If you two are quiet and still, they will not know you remain here.”

  “Screw that to hell,” Cloves said through gritted teeth. “I’m not staying here to die.”

  “Guard my daughter!” Kane snarled. “Do not let those things in here with her. Do not let them touch her. I cannot believe she is dead. Scott’s poisons have done…something to her. But we may still be able to reverse it. Keep her safe.”

  She stared back at him.

  “Please,” he said.

  This was insane,
we were really about to willingly throw ourselves back into a room full of unrestrained, violent and hungry Pale. I felt a queasy giddiness in my stomach, as though I was about to go over the top of the trenches.

  Kane looked at me. “Try to save them,” he said. “My people. I will give you the chance you need to do so. You must try.”

  I nodded. GO ambassador role or not, I would. Kane was willing to die for his tribe. To put his trust in me, of all people.

  There was a splintering of wood and the door bulged on the far side of our barricade.

  “If we’re going, it has to be now, right now,” Chase said. He passed his gun to Cloves. She took it, staring at him wordlessly, her mouth set. I didn’t know if he really was her old partner, somehow back from the dead, or just a mentally deranged impersonator, but there was a weight of history in the look they exchanged. I could only guess at it, but from Cloves’ expression, there was a lot which she would like to say.

  “You’ll need this out there more, you moron,” she said, but she still took the gun from him.

  “One bullet, four monsters. I’d be wasting my time. You have it.” He closed his fingers over hers on the handgrip. “Just in case.” His eyes flicked to Coldwater and I wondered if he was telling her to save the bullet, for either herself or the Director, in case things went wrong and the Pale did come for them.

  Two of them, only one round, but Cloves had never struck me as the kind of person to eat a bullet. I didn’t doubt for a second that if it came down to it, she would shoot the Director out of mercy, and then go down fighting, clubbing the Pale with an empty gun to her last curse-filled breath.

  Before he let go of the barrel, he narrowed his eyes. “Promise not to shoot me again if I give you this gun. I’m serious…it stings.”

  She stared him down. “At least until your back is turned,” she said, straight-faced, and he gave it to her, grinning.

  “There’s my old viper,” he said affectionately.

  At our direction, Cloves and Coldwater took shelter behind the one remaining bed, having dragged Kane’s daughter down gently with them. They were hidden as best they could. When the doors opened, we didn’t want to give the Pale the impression there was anyone in the room other than myself, Kane and Chase.

  I was hoping the monsters would be mainly focussing on Kane. In fact, I was pretty certain of it.

  “When we get to the corridor, if there are drones,” Chase whispered to me, as Kane tugged the barricade free, “stay low, and move slowly if you can. I’ll keep them busy. But don’t stop and don’t look back for me.”

  I nodded. My heart was pounding in my chest.

  Kane pulled the last bed away from the door, and with a deep roar, he changed. The tear and rip of leather and cloth as he bulged out of his clothes, limbs twisting and swelling, neck thickening and skin darkening to a deep furred gloss. I had only seen this process in him once, in reverse, but to see the bear emerge from the man was something else. Like an optical illusion he morphed, filling the doorframe as his voice blended from a guttural human sound to a deep and animal bellow. The heat from the transformation, from the swift shifting of cells and tissues en masse was like a blast from a kiln. In seconds, Kane was in were-form. Not fully a bear, but like with the strange were-panthers who had stalked me through the library, some hybrid stage. Half man, half beast. He stood beside us, huge and terrifying. He looked every inch the evil beast Marlin Scott would have the good folk of New Oxford believe he was.

  He smashed through the doors with a roar, charging back into the main ward, a monster throwing itself amongst monsters, and Chase Pargate and I, a second later, and much against my better judgement, followed suit.

  40.

  Chase was ahead of me, head low, diving for the floor as the Kane-beast roared into the makeshift ward, barrelling into the furious Pale like a train. I followed Chase’s lead, trying to make myself as small a target as possible. Kane’s roar was deafening, and the frantic hissing of the Pale seemed inches from my head. I slipped in something wet and almost lost my footing, my heart jittering.

  Liquid was all over the floor, slick and slippery, and it took a moment for my brain to register in the confusion that the tall cylinder tanks were open. Their power must have been cut at the same time Scott remotely stopped the sedation of the Pale, and they had opened like metal coffins, sluicing their contents onto the floor of the room. The bodies of the hosts lay sprawled face down on the floor, unmoving and tangled in their own drips and tubes. Puppets whose strings had been cut, their blank faces hidden by mops of wet hair.

  From what I glimpsed as I followed Chase, resisting the childish urge to grip to the back of his fluttering red jacket so he didn’t leave me behind, the Pale had not attacked the hosts, but had ignored them completely. They either didn’t register as a target in their furious, primitive minds, or else some basic animal instinct told them that the defenceless, naked bodies exposed on the floor harboured disease and danger which would kill them, and any other GO who came into contact with them.

  Chase vaulted one of the hospital beds like a steeplechaser. I leapt it too, my foot sinking wobbily into the springy mattress and almost throwing me off balance.

  Two of the four remaining Pale were grappling with the huge figure of Kane, one clinging to his back tenaciously, its claws seeking purchase in the dark furry hide, the other wrapped around a leg, sharp teeth gnawing into the muscle of the were-beast’s powerful thigh. With a roar of anger, Kane gripped a third Pale by the throat and threw it like a rag doll across the room. It sailed through the air, screeching, rebounded off a filthy window and clattered into one of the beds. Through the grimy window I glimpsed a sweep of searchlights, no doubt mounted on a hover-drone looking for a target.

  Every inch of my skin crawled as we scuttled through the ward. Every passing second I expected one of the creatures to notice us, and to leap for my throat. My back prickled with the anticipation of claws, but so far, the Pale were interested only in Kane. He was certainly making himself the centre of attention, the huge were-beast thrashing around, trying to shake off the creatures clinging to him. Chase and I may as well have been ants for all the attention they gave us.

  Ahead of me, Chase suddenly dropped swiftly out of sight into the space between two beds, and a second later I saw why. The fourth Pale, the only one not currently wrestling a Tribal, was just ahead, squatting on its hindquarters and hissing like a feral cat atop the metal bed frame. It seemed to be weighing up whether to join its companions in the attack on Kane. I threw myself between the beds, using them for cover, hoping to hell it hadn’t noticed me. Chase was already making his way underneath the bed frame I saw, crawling on his knees and elbows through the darkness. I followed suit, feeling only marginally safer down here, out of sight. I pushed myself forward like a commando, listening to the howls, thumps and roars of the struggle up above.

  Halfway through, trying not to be kicked in the face by Chase’s boots ahead of me, something landed heavily on the mattress above. It bulged downwards, almost trapping me, pinning me to the filthy floor. Grunting like an animal, I wriggled forward, forcing myself out from under the bed. The door leading back to the plastic wrapped corridor, our exit, was just ahead on our left. Chase was already there, squatting on his hands and knees, looking back over his shoulder at Kane and his assailants.

  A furious shriek issued from behind me as I crawled out from under my cover, and I felt sharp claws skitter at my shoes. The Pale which had landed on the bed above had clearly dropped down and spotted me.

  Glancing back, I saw the creature lying prone on its wasted stomach. Due to Scott's experiments, it only had one arm. The other was a bloody stump, upon which it propped itself as it reached hungrily under the darkness of the bed with its remaining good claw, swiping for me, and missing by inches.

  Naked terror reared in my head at the sight of it. It was every child’s worst fear made real. The monster under the bed, hideous and desperate, scrabbling for me. As I scuttle
d free, it began, with alarming swiftness, to snake under the bed towards me. I let out a wordless howl, and with all my strength, grabbed the edge of the bed and tipped it.

  I shouldn’t have been able to move the thing. It had taken Coldwater and Cloves’ combined efforts to drag just one of these things across the other room, but whether I had a shot of pure adrenalin due to imminent death, or some heightened strength from the vampire blood that still coursed through my system, the frame tumbled over on its side, coming down with a clatter like a solid wall between me and the monster. I heard it shriek in frustration. Two more seconds and it would be up and over and on top of me again, but two seconds was all I needed.

  I turned and scrambled to my feet, skirting the final bed in the ward to Chase’s side where he leaned against the doors. I practically barrelled into him.

  “Go, now,” I gasped shakily, trying not to sound too hysterical.

  I looked back, but the Pale wasn’t there. What I did see however froze me.

  The other three mutants had finally brought Kane to the floor. Their combined and relentless assaults had toppled the huge Tribal, and he lay face down, still struggling as they pinned him, hacking and slashing into his flanks, their mouths bloody and white eyes wide and mad. Kane could not shake them. I had the feeling this was the kind of fight where if you lost your footing, it was all over. His dark hide was matted with a sheen of blood. He had created the distraction we’d needed, he’d kept them busy and fought them well, but they were tearing the massive creature apart. We couldn’t just leave him.

  “Yes we can,” Chase whispered in a hiss, as though reading my mind. “We leave him. We go now, or we all die and his sacrifice is for nothing. They’ll be after us as soon as they’re done with him. We go now, Doctor. Stay low.”

  He pushed me through the swinging doors, and my last glimpse of the Tribal leader was a flailing claw swiping at the air, as the Pale held him down, their piercing cries filled with triumph and unrestrained bloodlust.