by Chris Ward
A clock on the wall above them said six o’clock. None of them had eaten since breakfast, but Akane had found a few bags of snacks behind the bar, which they passed among themselves. Ken had also helped himself to a couple of beers, although Akane felt he was showing considerable restraint.
‘What do we do now?’ Jun asked.
Ken shook his head. ‘If you have any ideas, I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Mr. Forbes said a helicopter would come,’ Akane said. ‘I’ve not seen or heard it. If only we could get a message out.’
Ken shivered despite the warmth of the fire. ‘What the fuck is going on with this place? I mean, seriously? What the fuck was that thing out there?’
‘There are two of them,’ Jun said quietly. ‘That wasn’t the one I saw. That one had been waiting for us. Waiting for the right moment. What was that about?’
Akane shivered. ‘Why didn’t it take him?’ she asked, nodding at O-Remo. ‘It could have taken him anytime. Why did it take Dai?’
Ken stared into the flames. Akane watched them dancing in his eyes, then turned towards Jun, who was staring down at his hands.
‘It thought he was already dead,’ Jun said. ‘It wasn’t killing because it was hungry. It was killing because it was a killer.’
Akane reached out to take his hand, but her fingers closed over something plastic. She looked down and saw Jun holding the unused flare canister in his hands, turning it over and over.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if you used that thing or not. It would have probably just made it mad.’
He turned to face her. ‘I’m scared,’ he said.
Behind them, O-Remo moaned. Ken got up and went over to the singer, dabbed a wet towel on his forehead and administered some more of the painkillers. ‘He’s lost so much blood,’ he said. ‘He probably needs a transfusion, but unless we can get him out of here he might not last the night.’
‘What can we do?’ Akane asked.
Ken went over to the window, wiped away the condensation, and peered out. ‘It’s snowing again. Not as hard as yesterday, but they’ll be another foot of it by tomorrow morning. With one or more of those things out there, I’m really not keen to try moving. I’m pretty sure that door wouldn’t keep it out, but I’m not sure there’s anywhere safer.’
‘Maybe the Grand Mansion,’ Jun said. ‘The doors are thicker, but we’d have to move O-Remo.’
Ken shook his head. ‘Who knows what damage we might cause? Plus, if the heating’s off in here, the heating might be off in there, too. I vote we stay put. We have heat here and we’re pretty secure. We’ve got water and a bit of food.’
Akane stared at O-Remo for a long time. Ken was right, of course. He might die in the night, but at least he was stable, and with the jackets and the fire, he was warm. If they moved him it might do more harm than good.
‘I vote we stay,’ she said.
Jun nodded. ‘Okay, it’s agreed. ‘What about the others? Perhaps one of us should go and look for them.’
‘You really want to go out there?’
‘No, but—’
Ken sighed. ‘It’s time for another beer. Why don’t you two join me? Takes the edge off things, you know.’
Akane started to protest that she was underage, then stopped. It might help them sleep. ‘I’ll have whatever’s going,’ she said with a weary smile.
Mika’s second shift of the day finished at nine p.m., but for the last hour she had hardly been in a state to work. She had got the fire in the reception area going, but in such an open space it offered scant heat unless she sat close enough to choke on the smoke. Instead, she sat in the office behind the reception area with a blanket over her knees to ward off the cold, while the news played on the TV in front of her.
Chained to her desk by a sense of duty, Mika had put out of her mind the high school girl who had come running for the first aid kit, preferring to stay near the phones in case the lines opened up or the Wi-Fi came back on. Two days ago she had been smartly dressed and welcoming new guests with a cheerful smile. Now she was alone in a freezing building, her hair was a mess, and a couple of hours ago a girl had come running in from the snow, covered in someone else’s blood.
And now the news was talking about the mangled, dismembered bodies of high school students being found at the foot of the landslide, and the smashed remains of an all-terrain vehicle.
She switched off the TV and looked up at the clock. Nine fifteen. She was starving, cold, and tired. She had seen no one other than the girl in several hours, and she was terrified that everyone had gone and left her. Alone in the ornate halls of British Heights, the antiquated artifacts brought from England gave her the creeps, as if she were the sole living person in a closed-down museum. What she wanted more than anything right now was her bed.
She got up and went over to the main doors, looking out at the snow falling on the courtyard. The floodlights were on, illuminating the bus and the two vans nearly buried in snow where they were parked up in the corner. In the morning some of the guests had cleared a path down the centre, and it was now filling in with snow. It led straight down the middle with a branch curving off towards the pub, the shop, and the staff quarters just beyond.
She shivered. The covered walkway along the east wing would be freer of snow, but it was darker, more foreboding. Cutting straight across the courtyard was the quickest route, and while the light from the floodlights wasn’t great, it was enough to guide her without any need to go near any creepy shadows until she was almost at the staff quarters. Plus, she could see lights on in the pub windows, so perhaps the others were in there. She gave a weak smile. A bit of company would be almost as welcome as her bed.
Finally giving up on the protocol drummed in by her training sessions, she took one of the jackets that could be lent to guests off a hook in a little cupboard beside the main door and pulled it over her head. It was a poncho-type made of thick material, with a hood. Feeling like an extra from a Harry Potter movie, she opened the door and stepped out into the snow.
She skipped down the steps and headed out across the courtyard, happy for the open space and the lights to chase away the shadows.
She was almost halfway across when she remembered that earlier there had only been one van, not two.
Jun jerked his head around at the sound of someone rattling the latch. Akane was sleeping beside him, her head propped up on a pile of chair cushions, a couple of tablecloths draped over her. Ken, several beers deep, had taken a break from telling Jun tales from the band’s early days to check on O-Remo. The singer didn’t look any better, but nor did he look any worse.
‘Who’s that?’ Ken whispered.
Jun climbed stiffly to his feet. ‘I’ll check.’
The door rattled again. ‘Let me in!’ came a woman’s voice.
Away from the fire, the room was much colder. Jun shivered as he pulled back the bolt and opened the door just wide enough for the stranger to slip inside. She was wearing a ski jacket and a woolly hat, so until she pulled it off Jun didn’t recognise her. As she shook out her hair and turned towards him, he started at the strikingly beautiful face, the large oval eyes that reminded him somewhat uneasily of Akane.
‘Karin,’ Ken muttered, putting down the cloth he had just used to mop O-Remo’s brow. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘I want to see him.’
Ken took one step towards her and slapped her across the face, hard enough to make her stagger. Jun caught her before she fell.
‘You fucking whore! Dai is dead because of you!’
She looked shocked for a moment, before recovering her composure. ‘He dragged me out there! It wasn’t my fault!’
‘The fuck it wasn’t.’
Ken lifted his hand to strike her again, but Jun stepped between them. ‘Enough,’ he said, staring Ken down. ‘This isn’t helping anything.’
Ken glowered for a moment before turning away. Out of th
e corner of his eye, Jun noticed Akane had sat up and was watching them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Karin whispered again.
‘We should throw you out there for whatever it was that killed Dai,’ Ken muttered, but he made no more move towards her. ‘What the fuck are you doing up here anyway?’
‘Rutherford … he’s my … fiancé.’
Ken stared at her, then shook his head. ‘Everything about you disgusts me,’ he said. ‘You could have helped him once, but you were too busy whoring yourself out to the highest contractor to care.’
‘No one could have helped him but himself. He didn’t want my help.’
‘You didn’t have to leave him like that.’
Jun’s ears were burning. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, as Akane came over to stand beside him: ‘Left him like what?’
‘At the altar,’ Karin said quietly. ‘He had a good heart. I … didn’t. I couldn’t do it to him.’
‘You broke his heart,’ Ken said.
Karin laid a hand on O-Remo’s forehead, stroking it gently. ‘I broke mine too.’
O-Remo was sleeping again. In front of the fire, Jun lay on his side with Akane pressed against him. Her eyes were closed, but he was sure she was listening. Ken was sitting with his back against an overturned table, a bottle of beer in his hand. Karin sat beside him, almost close enough to touch. Resigned to the hopelessness of their situation, Ken’s anger had quickly died away. Along with the others, he now sat in near silence as Karin recounted tales of her relationship with O-Remo, and her life before and after.
‘I don’t expect people to understand,’ she said, her voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire. ‘I don’t expect people to care, but being in the public eye is what I am. And when I lost everything, all I could think of was to find a way back. That’s how I ended up here, on the arm of a billionaire.’
Ken rolled his eyes as if it was an excuse he’d heard a thousand times before. Akane glanced up at Jun, who said nothing, and just kept his eyes on the fire.
‘Where’s Rutherford now?’ Akane asked.
‘Sleeping. He was driving me crazy so I dropped some pills in his coffee.’
‘Taking advantage of people again?’
‘I don’t like him,’ she said. ‘I just want his money. As soon as I’ve been married long enough to claim enough to finance a new album, I’ll divorce him.’
Ken shook his head, his nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘You’re like a snake, Karin,’ he said. ‘Dai and me knew it when you first started sniffing around. We tried to tell him, but he just wouldn’t listen.’
‘Come on, Ken, cast the first stone if you’re without sin, and all that. Like the rest of you weren’t taking advantage of people wherever you could? I saw Dai with that girl earlier. Just showing her around the area, was he? Don’t give me your high and mighty crap. Rutherford gets plenty of what he wants, believe me.’
‘We were only ever having a good time,’ Ken said. ‘What you’re doing is calculated.’
Karin shook her head. ‘You think I’m going to steal his livelihood or something? This place is just a toy for Rutherford. Barely more than a blip where his interests are concerned. He has factories overseas that are making him the real money.’
‘Well, lucky for you, isn’t it?’
Akane raised a hand. ‘Do you think he knows about the things in the woods? That thing that killed Dai wasn’t natural. It was like it had been bred like that or something.’
Karin shrugged. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘There’s only that legend, about the bird guy. That’s just a story, too.’
Ken shook his head. ‘O-Remo didn’t seem to think so, and Dai says he saw something too. And whatever it was, it stole my guitar.’
Karin shrugged. ‘Probably just some crazy local. People are wacko out here in the countryside. I’ve been up here a few months and you get all sorts of people wandering in. It’s just another story to bring in the tourists.’
Jun smiled. ‘You know what sucks most?’ he said. ‘I’ve been up at this bastard place for two days now and I’m yet to sleep in a proper bed. When I signed up I didn’t think we’d be camping every night.’
Akane shifted against him. She pulled his arm down across her chest and nestled in against him. ‘It could be worse,’ she said. ‘It could always be worse.’
Ken glanced over his shoulder towards the windows, where snow was pattering silently against the frames. ‘It could,’ he said.
Professor Kurou had opened a bottle of one of Forbes’s most precious wines, a 2004 Neblac Creek Vintage, to toast the bears’ first success. The cameras hidden in the trees had caught everything, and he had played back the whole episode of the rescue numerous times from several angles. It had caused him a little concern that the bears hadn’t shown any interest in the injured man, but they were designed to catch mobile prey, as the contract specified. Once a target had been disabled it could be discarded, and the injured man had clearly been perceived as already dealt with.
The other bears had now been alerted to the area, and two had already followed the trail up to British Heights. There was little that Kurou could do now, except stay safe and keep watch. Briefly engaging the Internet, he had learned that a rescue helicopter had been scheduled for tomorrow morning, providing the snow cleared enough to make a landing safe. Perhaps it would arrive to find no one left alive, who could tell? The contractor would be delighted to learn of the success of the prototypes, although capturing them again would prove a little difficult.
Kurou could deal with such problems at a later date, though. For now, he put his feet up on his desk, lifted a crystal glass full of wine so crimson it could have been blood, and gave a little salute.
‘To you, my friends,’ he said, taking a sip and scowling at the taste.
The phone rang, startling him. For a moment he wondered if the systems had come back on, then realised it was the satellite phone, the only way that British Heights could still be contacted. It was his private line. Even Forbes didn’t know the number.
The Professor kicked out one misshapen foot and switched on the hands-free speaker. ‘Mr. Forbes, are you there?’ came a man’s voice in heavily-accented English.
Kurou smiled. ‘Mr. Park, how nice to hear from you,’ he said, in a perfect representation of an English gentleman’s voice. ‘This is Mr. Forbes. How may I assist you this evening?’
Part III
Hunted
30
Discoveries and plans
Ogiwara groaned and rolled over. Something heavy rolled off him and smashed on the floor. As the scent of whiskey filled his nose he leaned forward and vomited all over the broken bottle, before rolling backwards and squeezing his eyes shut.
He waited for the nausea to pass, but had no such luck; as he tried to concentrate on breathing slowly he coughed, starting it off again, vomiting what was left in his stomach up over the duvet pulled up over his chest. Shoving it away, he sat up, closed his eyes against the dizziness, then opened them again on to the wreckage of the King’s Bedroom.
He remembered now. Bored and unable to find the others, they had gone back to the snooker room—which they had found unlocked—grabbed as much booze as they could carry and gone on a whiskey-fueled mission of destruction. Mirrors were smashed, tables and chairs overturned, antique bookcases pulled over and their contents kicked around the room. Antique vases had become baseballs as Ogiwara used a whiskey bottle as a bat.
He needed water, so he stumbled out of the bed and staggered into the bathroom. He ran the tap and splashed freezing water over his face. He felt like he’d descended the seven levels of Hell with a red-hot firebrand jammed up his butt.
‘You sleep all right?’
Ogiwara spun at the sound of the voice, gasping in terror at the bear-human creature peering at him from the bathtub. He scrabbled for something to throw, then he realised it was Mishima, sitting in the tub with a bearskin rug draped over him, the long-dead animal’s glassy eyes at h
is shoulder.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You took the bed, remember? I didn’t want to sleep in the other room, I was too scared.’
Ogiwara grabbed an ornate hand mirror that had somehow escaped the previous night’s destruction and flung it at Mishima, who ducked back behind the bearskin rug just in time. The mirror thudded into the tough hide and bounced away without breaking.
‘Get up, you idiot. I’m hungry.’
They made their way out into the corridor, both rubbing their heads against thumping hangovers. Ogiwara felt like someone had punched him in the stomach, and his throat was sore and parched.
‘Do you think we’ll get in trouble?’ Mishima asked.
‘For what?’
‘For, you know, causing all that damage?’
‘From who? They fucking deserved it. Making all our friends sick, locking us in the snooker room, leaving us up here–’
‘I thought Matsumoto locked us in the snooker room?’
‘He did.’
‘But you said—’
‘Just shut up about what I said. I feel like shit. I don’t know what I said.’
Ogiwara went out into the corridor with Mishima trailing behind him. From the stains down the front of his shirt, it was clear Mishima had been sick at some point too. Whether he remembered was another matter.
Ogiwara peered out of the window at a grey dawn. Snow was falling again, not as heavily as it had the first night but still enough to leave no hint of sun. The courtyard, which had been partially cleared the night before, was once more a sheet of white.
‘I’m fucking hungry,’ Ogiwara said. ‘Let’s find something to eat.’
They went down the main stairs to the reception, but it was deserted. The embers of a fire still smoked in the grate. As his hangover began to loosen its grip on him, he realised for the first time just how cold it was. He could understand the heating systems being off in the snooker room, but here in the main building? He glanced back at Mishima descending the stairs behind him, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.
