Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (10 page)

Shoot a man and they’ll give you a medal. Shoot a dog or a pussycat and you are in serious, deep, deep, shit.

Modern Warfare and the Media:

The Thin Black Headline Between Sympathy and Outrage

W. Duchalle

‘Ten credits if you can hit him.’

‘Him or her.’

‘Him or her.’

‘Hit it? Make it twenty and I’ll catch it.’

Croel patted the wad of credits in his jacket pocket. ‘Well, call me Mr. Affluent, but I am feeling particularly extravagant today.’

‘Alright Mr. Affluent, place your credits where your spouting mouth hole is.’ Mckeever rubbed absently at his eye patch, ‘or should that be Mr. Effluent?’

‘The only seepage I can see is the liquefied remnants of your eye escaping down your cheek.’

Mckeever tried to ignore him but then wiped a sleeve across his cheek and jaw before quietly taking off his overcoat. ‘Game on,’ he said.

They looked up at the thrush that was perched on the lip of a large, tattered hole in the roof. Mckeever’s black wings were flush to his back as he crept along the dimly lit perimeter of the room, slowly edging closer to the morning’s natural daylight and the small brown bird silhouetted against it. He looked like a vulture in both gait and purpose.

The library’s loft was a dank festering mess of mouldy books and rotting paper and carpet. The rain was allowed all too easy access by the various punctures and blow holes that punctuated the sharp angles of the roof, like tattered exit wounds in flesh. Fungus thrived on thick, woven book covers and sought to create new patterns on flayed wallpaper and the spongy floor. Even the birds’ whistled song could not penetrate the lofty murk to any meaningful extent; the lyrical, stuttered warbles chirped of vitality, vibrancy and colour but died in the cold, dank quagmire of decay.

Songs had no place here.

The morning light struggled down through a rafter free hole that four slates used to occupy and illuminated Croel’s paper-cut smirk. He clapped his hands mischievously and chuckled as the thrush sputtered into motion and took off. Mckeever snapped an annoyed glance at Croel before springing to the centre of the room where the soft, chewed floorboards that sat directly below the loft’s largest hole were bowed and buckled. They began to sigh, soggy, disconcerted moans at his weight. They were dissolving beneath his feet and seemingly about to transport him with great speed and purpose to the next floor down. Moments before the level turned into quicksand he sprang up, through the hole and out onto the roof, where he disturbed a few of the remaining slates before a strong downbeat of his wings took him away from the rotting library’s shell and into the sky. It was not graceful, but it was an amazing feat of physical dexterity given the confines and restrictive nature of his environment. Croel clapped again, this time without ill intent or irony and, still chuckling, dashed to the main stairwell to make his way to the roof via a concrete flight of stairs, altogether less precarious or entertaining. Outside he scanned the skyline and nearby buildings for signs of Mckeever.

There.

Perched in the high, acute angle of a nearby church window, the gothic, elegant lancet arch framed him where he sat, just below the keystone, rubbing his eye-patch and grimacing like a macabre gargoyle fashioned after a long dead pirate saint. The stained glass had fallen from the archaic window years ago, and was now fractured and scattered across the graveyard fifty feet below like fossilised and forgotten confetti. There had been no limitations on height in architecture or structure when the church had been built. It had once been a place used for public displays of fickle commitment, pointless worship and goggle-eyed grief. Now, as it towered above the dirge of low level structures and cowered derelict shells, it was a great lookout spot.
 

Mckeever surveyed the surrounding area.

His head angled and darted from side to side, birdlike and skittish, checking the angles, taking in details, searching for prey. His wings hulked at his back as he watched and waited. Unsatisfied with his progress he gracefully fell from the window, flew between the buttresses and then used his downward momentum to bank into a strong up-current and climb to the base of the transept spire, the church’s highest point, where he perched again.

The weather vane pointed between N and E, as it had for decades.

Mckeever looked in the opposite direction and found his quarry. The thrush was in a nearby tree, betraying its position with a song that no doubt boasted of a recent heroic escape.

Mckeever locked onto it and fell silently, a black missile. His wings shaped as a compressed capital M, angled for speed, only pulling up at the final possible instant. He hit the top of the branches with a noisy clatter, his legs spread and his hands snatched down, plucking the bird from the tree, like a child snatching marbles from the playground in a comical bunny hop. He clutched the thrush to his chest as he spiralled to maintain control, coming out of the spin to fly to the library roof where Croel stood slowly applauding. It was the rhythmic, sarcastic clap that implied derision rather than any kind of admiration or acknowledgement.

‘Got her,’ Mckeever blustered, breathless from the effort.

‘Or him.’

‘Or him.’

‘It’s good to know you have retained some of your finer techniques though it was certainly more, ah, buzzard than hawk, shall we say.’

‘No, “we” shall not say. You shall say. You always do fucking say.’

Croel harrumphed to cancel out Mckeever’s indignation.

‘It’s skewed my depth perception and it’s definitely going to take some getting used to in the air but I can still fly, still hunt. I think I’m going to be OK.’ He looked at the small brown bird in his hand and asked, ‘What do you think little thing, hmmm? Would you say I gave
you
a good run for
his
money?’

Croel grumbled and rummaged in his pockets for an age to produce twenty credits, that he begrudgingly handed over, despite their substantial pay last night.

‘You know what they say: a bird in the hand is worth twenty smackers in your back pocket.’ He kissed the credits and stuffed them into his trousers.

‘No. You say. Not they. You.’

There was a moment of silence between them that Mckeever took as a hostile invitation to continue gloating.

He declined.

Croel started to walk toward the stairs. ‘Let’s go down for some target practice. The crossbows are primed and I want to exercise my area of expertise now that you have had your fun.’

Mckeever nodded and followed him to the stairwell.

‘And maybe you will be an honourable gentleman and allow me to win my money back.’

‘Of course,’ said Mckeever, ‘but it’s got to be on the wing.’

‘That goes without saying, old friend.’

‘Hey, less of the friend.’

They both laughed.

‘And Mac’

‘Yes?’

‘Bring her or him.’ Croel said, gesturing at the thrush, then bounded down the flight of stairs in two jumps.

Mckeever looked into the unblinking, shiny black eyes of the bird and felt it trembling in his hand.

It had been silent since its capture.

‘If we are lucky, Croel will miss and you will double my money as you fly free.’

The thrush cocked its head as if trying to decode this alien, whistle free tongue.

Mckeever pulled the fire exit door shut and started down the stairs fully aware that Croel would already have his crossbow ready and that the bird’s fate, his or her's, was already forged.

His colleague, backed or otherwise, never missed.

A problem shared is still a fucking problem.

Vanguard Training

Sergeant Windaker
 

‘Ghyll said they had been told to await further instruction,’ I said to Doc Carlow.

‘Meaning?’ Carlow asked.

‘That there’s something much bigger going on in the background.’

‘It implies something else to me, something less obvious but much more salient.’

Pan shrugged her ignorance, looked into a wall mirror and carried on trying to tease her hair into some semblance of order. It was not working.

‘I don’t know, maybe that someone else was on their way to finish me off, that I should have hung around to see who came along,’ I said.

‘You’re missing the point,’ Doc sat back in one of his floral chairs with a slight air of smug satisfaction. His palms were pressed together, making a steeple of his fingers. ‘Try not to think about you and your course of action, think about them. Leave the hyperbole behind and look at what you know.’

‘They were low-life scum for hire and someone blackmailed them to come after me.’

‘Good, go on.’

‘They were holding us both there until…’

‘Until what exactly?’

‘Further instructions,’ added Pan, looking at my reflection in the mirror. She nodded, pleased she had been able to join in.

‘So why didn’t someone just pay them to finish you both off? Would it not have been infinitely less elaborate to have them just kill you there, at the Arena? Why transport you to the cells?’ Doc sat forward becoming animated. ‘The people who orchestrated this obviously have great power and resources. I mean, they managed to catch these, what did you call them, “scum-bags”, where the Mudhead Police had failed on a number of occasions, yet somehow they got to them and coerced them into catching you.’

‘I know they didn’t want to kill me. That was obvious. I knew that when I woke up in the cell. Like I said, there’s something bigger going on.’

‘You are still missing the point. What did they want if not to kill you?’

‘They wanted me out of the way.’

‘Now we are getting somewhere.’

‘But why? I was there on a job to catch the very people who dragged me off into the sunset.’

‘It’s a timing thing. They must have wanted you out of the way, right then, for a specific reason. Find out the ‘why’, find out what else went on last night and the ‘who’ will follow.’

‘I did not understand a word of what he just said,’ said Pan.

‘He just said I am being primed or framed for something and I need to work out who is doing it. Fast.’

‘I have something else to suggest, and I hope it does not offend your warrior code or selfish sensibilities.’

I finished off my tea with two noisy gulps. I hadn’t realised it was cold and shuddered as it went down.

‘I think they wanted you to escape.’

‘It didn’t look or feel that way,’ said Pan, rubbing her chin.

I shot her a sympathetic look and then thought about what Doc had just said and the ease of my escape.

He had a point.

‘Whoever wanted you there, knows who you are and what you are capable of. They supplied you with all the ingredients you needed to get out: inept, careless captors, flimsy holding facilities, minimal guard presence with no supervision or back up, despite knowing your skills well and having you where they supposedly wanted you.’

It was all starting to make sense.

‘There were no further instructions coming. You were supposed to wake up and break out. You are an ex-Slayer. That is what you are programmed to do. And they know that. You know that.’ Doc went to take a sip of tea, realised his cup was empty, shook his head and placed the empty cup upside down on the tray.

‘So, by that logic, they could have known we would come here too,’ said Pan.

‘We were not followed. I made sure of it. We got here by a series of half loops and double backs. There’s no way anyone followed us, on ground or above.’

‘I concur,’ said Doc standing, his knees eliciting an audible pop as he did. ‘So what do you think would normally be the next thing you’d do, after leaving me here?’

‘I’d go back to the cells, properly investigate, maybe even wait for someone else to show with further instructions.’

‘So don’t do the obvious. Do the opposite. That will make them veer from their plans and react to you rather than control you. You must disembark from your usual train of thought, Drake.’ He rose from his chair and smiled, possibly pleased he had made it to the end of the conversation without any half loops or double backs or perhaps that he had successfully remembered my name.

‘In fact, more than simply being contrary, I would encourage you to think before you think.’ He walked into the kitchen. ‘More tea?’

I shook my head at the effortless profundity of his statement.

‘I’ll have coffee.’

‘I thought you didn’t like coffee,’ said Pan.

‘Exactly,’ said Doc from the next room.

Pan shook her head and frowned as a flick of hair swung down over her eyes.

Doc came back into the room as the water boiled, ‘I need to make more notes, please excuse me.’ He scribbled a few short sentences, tapping his pencil when details eluded him. Then satisfied, he set his book back on the table, on a pile of other, similar notebooks.

Pan looked at the pile of books. ‘It must be a chore living like this, having to write everything down,’ she said.

‘Ignorance can be bliss,’ he said.

‘You mean the absence of worry and concern?’ I asked.

‘No. My condition in itself gives cause for both. What I mean is,’ he paused and looked up, searching the painted ceiling of his mind for the right picture, ‘all my life, logic has been prevalent in my thinking. My modus operandum if you will, from my time spent learning basic physician duties as a Mudhead Police Medical Officer to the intricate, pioneering work on transplants and grafts, burns and battle wounds, the idiosyncrasies of the body itself. Logic is the thread running through it all. As a scientist and as a human being, it has always affected my decisions and actions, given meaning to my life and helped me help others.’

‘But that’s the same for all of us,’ said Pan.

‘To a point,’ said Doc, ‘but then other influences kick in. Conditioning, how we respond or react to stimulus is as much, if not more, governed by experience than logic. The bell rings, the dog salivates.’

‘I’m locked up, I escape.’

‘Exactly,’ said Doc. ‘Psychologists also argue that on some level our genetic encoding will determine our course of action, whether we have a predisposition to independence or family, egalitarianism or intolerance, peace or rage. And so on.’

Pan looked at me as Doc Carlow had said ‘rage’, I pretended not to notice.

‘I’m not saying those things do not have any bearing on me or the person I am any more, it is just they affect my decision making here and now less than they used to...’ He stood to go back into the kitchen. ‘And the bliss comes from being governed primarily by logic. It lends decision making an uncomplicated purity, gives me a kind of freedom if you will.’

‘Doesn’t that mean you miss out on some things as well?’ said Pan.

‘Yes, it does. Absolutely. Good and bad. I can recall vividly most events in my life up to the accident. The building blocks for who I am, the type of person I am, the foundations for the body and the soul are already laid. Everything I have learned, ingrained.’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I said bitterly.

‘And here Drake proves my point. That the person I have come to be will no longer be shaped by catastrophes or loss, jaded by bad experiences or disappointments. I can be positive and logical because that is all I can be, all I ever will be. It is what I
logically
choose.’

‘What about the passage of time? Are you aware of it?’ asked Pan, ignoring the tension between us now. These were all similar questions that I had asked Doc myself, at one time or another.

 
‘Time means very little to me anymore. It is simply our attempt at quantifying the mystical onto a scale of measurable units. To me time is divided into two epochs. Before the acci… I mean before Bethscape Field and today.’

‘But don’t you miss practising medicine?’ asked Pan.

‘Yes. Every single day. Though, in my case, the frustration comes from what I do know rather than what I have forgotten.’

He went back into the kitchen then and Pan went back to tending to her hair, frowning as she did.

‘He was one of the best,’ I said. ‘He could do things on the battlefield that surgeons in fixed hospitals would struggle with, even seen him splice a wing.’

‘Is that why he was with you, at Bethscape Field?’

‘He was the field Doctor, like I said, one of the best, one of the good guys, and there aren’t many. He came along to learn and to help save lives. As simple and as complicated as that.’ Something about Pan’s demeanour told me I had been terse with my last response.

‘Look, it’s been a long day. We’ll finish this drink and then get you home and paid for your trouble.”

‘Fine,’ it was Pan’s turn to snap.

Doc came back into the room with the tray of drinks and I was reminded of the grace and finesse he had always conducted himself with. He was a neat, precise man, in everything he did; as decisive and elegant with thoughts as he was with a scalpel. It reminded me of the intricate, protracted medical operations I had seen him perform and brought back the bone deep, head spinning sadness of loss, which settled in my stomach like a stone balloon. I missed him and I grieved for him.

For us both.

For us all.

I had a drink and was also reminded how much I hated coffee.

The dull aches in my leg and arm were subsiding and the drug induced fugue of intoxication was dissipating.

The morning was pressing on and it would soon be time to go.

Whilst I was reluctant to leave this sanctuary of warm drinks and cool observation, I was keen to get in motion; to take the fight to them, whoever they were. This time there were no fat cat lawyers, politicians or directors pulling my strings, telling me where to go, what was expected.

This was not the chain of command or other people’s Machiavellian agendas. It was about survival and pride and self-preservation as it was on any battlefield.

And it felt as exhilarating and as petrifying as I had remembered it.