by Chris Ward
Robert was lying on his back, spread-eagled on the floor, one crutch at his side and the one blocking the door stuck beneath him. He had been shot in the face, but his head had lolled to the side, shadows hiding the worst of the damage.
The room was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from the monitors and a small table lamp. Victor felt the need to close the door, as if it would block out all the world’s troubles. He pushed it as far closed as he could. Only then did he realise that Isabella wasn’t the only person in the room.
The girl was sitting on a chair in the corner, a gun on her lap. She didn’t move as he came in, but he heard her give a quiet sigh.
‘Hello, Victor. You took your time.’
‘Patricia.’
Victor’s heart was thundering. He had considered a thousand eventualities on his way up here, but Isabella’s little sister hadn’t crossed his mind. Over the last few days the girl had been nearly invisible, helping with the war effort and staying out of sight.
‘What happens now?’ she said, patting the gun against her knees. ‘I wondered if you’d come. I thought you might. Not much else left for you, is there?’
It felt like he should say something heroic, or meaningful, or even diplomatic, but all he could muster was a quiet, ‘No.’
‘I’d like to blame you for everything that’s happened, for the war, and the train crash and my father’s death, and a thousand other things. I’d like to say that everything is your fault, but it’s not, is it? You didn’t start the war, and you had no real involvement in ending it. Nothing much was your fault really.’ She cocked the gun. In the gloom Victor couldn’t even tell what kind of gun it was. ‘No, the only thing I can really blame you for is the death of my brother.’
‘I didn’t—’
She raised a hand, rolling her eyes as if he was a complaining child. ‘I know, I know. Don’t waste your breath. I know you didn’t kill him, that it was Kurou’s machine. Whatever. Who cares now? You’re not listening to me, Victor. I could blame you, but that wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t your fault, just like what happened to Isabella wasn’t your fault. Nothing was your fault.’
She lifted the gun and fired it into the ceiling, causing a cascade of dust and concrete. In the tiny room the sound was incredibly loud. Victor shrank back, clutching the bag to him like a comfort blanket.
‘You see, Victor, I can’t blame you for anything. You’re such a spineless pathetic weed that you’ve drifted through your whole life doing nothing of any importance or note, making no impression.’ She leaned forward into the light, and the pure, uncontained rage on her face made him flinch. ‘You’re such a worthless, nothing of a human being that I want to blow your fucking face right off your skull.’
The ferocity of her hatred was stunning. It took Victor a few seconds of uselessly working his jaw up and down before he could muster forth a reply.
‘I … I … I can save Isabella.’
‘Save her? You think that condemning her to a life with you is saving her? The only way to save her is with this gun.’
Patricia stood up and pointed the gun at Isabella’s face.
‘No, don’t hurt her!’
She turned towards him. ‘Are you going to stop me? Go on, Victor. I’ll make it easy for you.’
To his astonishment she turned the gun over in her hand and held it out to him.
‘Go on, take it. Kill me, and save your beloved girlfriend. Take it!’
Victor stared at the gun, then looked back up at Patricia. Isabella lay between them, a sacrificed Juliet on her mechanical altar.
‘Why did you kill your father?’
‘Take the gun, Victor.’
‘Why?’
Her bottom lip trembled. ‘He wasn’t my father. He left me to die. He took Isabella, but he left me behind.’
Victor shook his head. ‘There was no choice. He thought you were already dead. He was just trying to save himself and Isabella.’
‘He could have waited!’ she screamed, almost as loud as the gunshot had been. Victor took a step backwards as she turned the gun and held it first up towards his chest, then down at her father lying on the floor.
‘He did wait,’ Victor said, voice trembling. ‘Isabella told me, he did wait. Those men he sent looking for you, they told him they found your body, but they lied. They tricked him. He left because he thought you were dead.’
While he wasn’t entirely sure he was right, having pieced together the words from Isabella’s incoherent mumblings during their climb back up to the base after the destruction of the train, he felt certain Patricia wouldn’t know either.
All he needed to do was keep the gun from pointing at Isabella or himself. If he could just calm Patricia down, he might even be able to enlist her help.
The girl was still staring at him. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
‘I can’t prove it so you’ll have to.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
Victor jumped aside as Patricia lifted the gun and fired. The bullet hit the door behind where he had been standing. Patricia started to come around the bed towards him, but Victor grabbed Robert’s loose crutch and swung it at her feet. It caught between them and tripped her. The gun went off again, this time the bullet hitting the floor just in front of his face. Then Patricia hit the ground, grunting as she landed heavily on her shoulder. Victor grabbed her wrist, turning the gun away as she tried to aim it back towards him.
The girl was wild, but Victor was far stronger. He twisted her around in front of him, holding the gun arm against the floor. She struggled for a few seconds, but he held on to her tightly until she went still.
‘Look, your sister is going to die if we don’t help her soon,’ Victor said. ‘I can do it. I have what I need in my bag. You can help me.’
‘You really want me to help you?’
‘Yes.’
Patricia sighed. Victor thought he heard a sniff, and wondered if she was crying. ‘I’ll help you if you help me,’ she said.
‘Sure. What do you want me to do?’
‘Take the gun. I can’t trust myself.’
Her request was a little strange, but she had gone limp in his arms. He eased his hand along her arm until his fingers closed over the cold metal of the gun. He pushed her fingers aside and eased his over the handle, pulling it out of her grasp. She didn’t move as he slid the gun back towards his pocket.
‘Victor?’ her voice was meek, like a child’s.
‘What?’
‘Remember my face.’
Before he could respond, she grabbed his arm, catching him off guard. She twisted the gun up towards her, pushed his fingers over the trigger, and pulled them tight.
The blast was deafening. Victor cried out and rolled away from Patricia as the girl’s body slumped against the floor. He wiped her blood off his face, tears filling his eyes. He stared at her, a thousand unsaid reassurances racing through his mind. The gun had spun away across the floor and he wanted to take it up, point it at his own face and silence all the bitter voices telling him how much he had failed, how many people had died because of him.
Then, as the ringing in his ears began to ease, he heard the low rise and fall of breathing.
Isabella.
She was the one chance he had left to redeem himself. He climbed to his feet with the lethargy of a dying man reaching a mountaintop, and pulled his bag of tools up on to the bed.
He couldn’t be sure this would even work. As he stared at Isabella’s gaunt, ashen face, he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just switch off her life support and be done with it.
No, a voice whispered at the back of his mind, and he wondered who it could belong to. Surely not Kurou, the Grey Man, or even his long dead mother. Perhaps, he thought, wistfully, it belonged to himself.
Save her, it whispered again.
So he tried.
Epilogue
Light, Darkness, Uncertainty
It was a fine, frosty morning on the
first day after the end of the world. Kurou strolled through the remains of the town, his cane tapping on the hardened snow underfoot, and the occasional piece of metal or rock debris lying close by. The greatest beauty in such an unforgiving climate, he thought, unable to forget the scars that covered his body, was that it didn’t allow fires to burn for long. A few wisps of smoke drifted up into the air from the fallen machines and the bombed-out buildings, but a layer of snow and ice had already formed as the Siberian wastes staked its claim on the remains.
Never one to dwell too much on the past, Kurou turned his mind back to his future plans. With the war as good as over and the Grey Man dealt with at last, it seemed a corridor of uncertainty had opened up in the direction of Northern Europe, so it might be best to head that way for a while. The joy his latest masterpiece had given him would only last so long. In time he would feel the urge to create something new.
He didn’t know how far south it was to reach the Trans-Siberian Express, a train that according to reports on the internet was still operating. It had to be several hundred miles, but he was a resourceful fellow, he thought, as he gave his cane a twirl. There would be something somewhere that would take him.
The last of Victor’s strength was almost gone as he stepped out into the light. All around him the valley shone crisp and clear beneath an aquamarine sky. The snow was pristine and untouched all around, but there, poking up through the snow by his feet was the shoot of something green, something that would soon grow into a beautiful shrub or flower. A long overdue spring was on its way.
He hoisted Isabella in his arms and took a few steps forward, the sun warming his face. He looked down and saw her eyelids flutter. Her lips moved slightly, then she groaned and settled back into sleep.
The bulge just below her neck was barely perceptible under the thick jacket he had dressed her in, but the robot component had fitted well, clearly pleased in its artificial way to be reunited with its human companion. Managing it would take time, as would her recovery, but Victor felt quietly confident. The last few weeks would never fade from his memory, but there was no point looking back, only forward.
Looking down the valley at the hint of a path that would take him back to Brevik and whatever lay behind, Victor took the first step into an uncertain but welcome future.
He had been sleeping, but when he opened his eyes nothing had changed. The wires still bit into his body, the air still felt thick and dry.
Moving his body would do nothing to help him, so he stayed still, conserving his strength. Instead, he closed his eyes again, and let his mind drift, reaching out.
Old friend, he called. Can you hear me? I have need of you.
END
The Dark Master of Dogs
The Dark Master of Dogs
A penny for your thoughts, sire….
Twenty years ago, after thwarting an invasion that threatened to engulf the whole of Europe, the enigmatic but deadly Professor Crow limped away from a remote Siberian town and disappeared.
Now he is back, reappearing in Britain in 2034, where the mysterious Maxim Cale is making a bid for control of a country in turmoil.
In the quiet Somerset town of Cheddar, teenager Patrick Devan is looking for his missing brother, Race, while his girlfriend, Suzanne, is in great danger after her own father’s abrupt disappearance.
As Patrick and Suzanne flee the brutal Department of Civil Affairs, Professor Crow sets his plans in action.
But when their paths cross, there will be no escape, as the unpredictable master of robots plans to wreak havoc on the world one last time….
Prologue - The Offer
The abandoned pinball hall stood on the hilltop, framed by a basket of leafy foliage, the last paint on the tall sign that had once beckoned gamblers and fools for miles around glittering in the evening sun. The peak of the flat, ugly hill had once been bald, smeared by an asphalt road that meandered up to the clutch of amusement businesses that clustered together on its summit. There had been a café, a small hotel, and a nightclub that had doubled as a prostitution den. All were gone now, torn down, the land reclaimed by the forest that had gradually crept back up the hill like a frightened crowd returning to the scene of a crime.
The pinball hall, for no particular reason that Race Devan knew of, had been left standing. Of course, local kids had beaten it to shit, using it for everything from staging gang fights to drunken birthday parties. There wasn’t a window left intact, a wall panel that hadn’t been sprayed with some wanton obscenity, a door that hadn’t been kicked in. Twice, some nameless, faceless punk had set it on fire, and both times the apathetic local fire brigade, unwilling to waste any more taxpayer’s money on saving something no one wanted anyway, had let it burn itself out.
The road was long overgrown, but a path on the hill’s south side was still regularly used by hikers. The sun was an hour from setting when Race Devan hit the bottom of the trail, his guitar in a case under one arm, his bag of supplies slung over the other. As he stared glumly up at the steeply rising path he fought an internal battle with his motivation. He had been planning this for the last week, but a couple of drinks of his mother’s homebrew and a leer over a picture of his brother’s girlfriend had sucked much of the drive out of him. Searching for some kind of enthusiasm, he forced himself to recall a blistering Ken Okamoto riff and the words of his own band’s drummer at practice last week.
‘Dude, that new riff of yours sucks. What happened, man? When’d you lose your edge?’
He’d argued that it was all bullshit, that his riffs were as good as ever, but it was a lie. He knew exactly when his edge had gone: the day he had graduated from Sixth Form and gone to work at the factory. Instead of shamming his way through classes and ignoring homework assignments to work on his songs, he had found himself doing ten-hour shifts sitting on an assembly line welding bits of metal together while his mind slowly came undone. It wasn’t like he had a choice—you worked or the Department of Civil Affairs came and took you away—but it wasn’t like the rest of the band wasn’t working too. Perhaps his old songs had just been too bitchingly badass that a slight lifting of his foot from the pedal had taken his edge away.
Still, he could get it back. All he needed was a little inspiration.
He reached the top of the hill, breathing hard and sweating beneath his black leather jacket. The sun was just dipping beneath the hills to the west, but Race gave it little more than a scowl as he sat down on the steps of a small viewing platform that had also escaped the encroachment of the forest, lit a cigarette, and opened the bottle of homebrew he had carried up with him.
First things first. He couldn’t just start to play. It had to be like it was at school, when he’d start drinking on the sly somewhere around lunchtime, then get back home to his guitar about half-past-five good and tanked, a succession of searing riffs ready to break free.
He ripped the cap off the bottle and flung it away into the weeds. With a satisfied grin, he took the first swig of a decent attempt at homebrewed whisky, loving the way it burned on its way down. It was so good he could have finished the bottle in one swallow, but he wanted to measure it out.
It was a good view from here. As dusk fell, clusters of lights appeared in the dips of the valleys, while some way to the east a series of orange spotlights indicated a road crew. They were still over there working on the old motorway, pulling it up piece by piece in a gradual arc up towards London. He couldn’t help feeling a hint of jealousy. One of his bandmates worked on the roads, and while they worked all night it had to be better out in the open air than in some stuffy factory.
In his bag was a pair of battery-powered speakers. He plugged them into an ancient MP3 player he’d found in a closet. It was loaded up with old shit, but bands these days sucked, especially British bands with all the censoring. European and Asian metal was where it was at, and a blend of the two was even better.
Race had only a passing interest in the musicians his bandmates listened to. The song
s were decent enough, but he’d never managed to turn them over to his kind of music. Still, perhaps letting them pedal their crap too much was another reason why his riffs weren’t as good as they had been.
He needed to go old school. Get his inspiration back.
Plastic Black Butterfly, their fourth and fifth albums, the last with O-Remo Takahashi and the first with Jun Matsumoto, they were where it was at. Ken Okamoto was at his best on those two records, raging first against the band’s dwindling popularity and then second against the tragedy that had befallen the band’s original lineup. In those riffs and blazing solos, Race found his euphoria. Closing his eyes as he listened, he could imagine a black flood of tar come rushing forth to steal all colour from the world.
Race took his guitar out and plugged it into an old smartphone, opening up a music recording app that he had once filled with thundering riffs. He put a single earphone into his left ear, leaving his right ear for the speakers.
‘Ready, set … rock.’
He selected his favorite playlist and heavy metal riffs came pounding out of the speakers. Race turned them up as loud as he could, then switched up the volume on his smartphone amp.
‘Yeah,’ he groaned, feeling almost orgasmic as he attacked his guitar strings, jamming along to the music. It had been a while since he had really practiced, and it took a few minutes to get his hands warmed up, but soon his fingers were flying over the strings faster than they ever had. Taking occasional sips of whisky, he rocked out while the light faded from the world and the tapestry of countryside spreading out below turned as black and star-studded as the sky above.
