Fletcher (24 page)

The twins were nowhere to be seen.

The wave crested and broke upon my mind, allowing for more prolonged snatches of sanity while I stalked the hallways. I had to find...something. The gum—wait, I forgot: flesh—tasted metallic on my tongue and I hocked it over the beige carpet. The digit seemed pitifully small. I found myself screaming through the empty spaces.

“Strauch! Strauch! It’s time to play!”

There was a heavy heartbeat in my ears. I was slowly coming down. My plan came back into a sharper relief. Deception in chaos. Chaos from deception. I checked my floor: eleven. I had to get to twelve.

A friendly arm had kept the elevator open for me. It wasn’t attached to the owner. I kicked it back inside and pressed the button, leaving Dante and Clarice behind. My grudge was to be settled alone.

There was no public elevator to Strauch’s floor. I had to draw him out. I reached the network room as the tell-tale drips of pleasure started seeping through my mind. I forced myself to focus on my goal: this was no time for

Oh god

distractions. Outside, in the streets, sirens were blasting. Fire spilled from buildings. The gunshots hadn’t died down. I continued to tear at the network cables, re-arranging connections. All part of the plan.

not now

My mind swooned for a second. I scrabbled around in my

Jesus

pockets for another dose, anything to keep the fury raging, anything to keep the wheels of anger rolling. Nothing.

…Shit.

I shut down. Bliss burst through my blood. A graphic moan forced itself out of my throat and I slumped to the floor, wracked with pleasure. I dug my nails into my leg in an attempt to ground myself. It didn’t work.

Oh god oh god oh god focus you cunt you idiot oh god yes

This is why I didn’t do
angel-rage
. This eclipsing moment, this utter rush of joy. The Crippling Climax. I forced myself into a heavy, slamming rhythm of breath, but the burning in my chest did nothing to block the flood. My thoughts formed a slurry of expletives until I was eventually just screaming “Fuck yes,” over and over again.

#0002

“One in passion, one in premeditation. I chose her for her eyes. Stark green balls, entrancing, beautiful. She had the daintiest smile you’ve ever seen.

I broke into her apartment. It wasn’t hard—she left her keys under the mat. I broke into her apartment while she slept and beat her to death with a shovel. Her screams brought attention, but I escaped without being seen. I hope.

“So much power. I raised that shovel and I was God. There was blood everywhere. It was even more beautiful than she was.

“This is your first real step down the rabbit hole, K. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

27: Thrash, Twitch, Triumph

Reality flickered back in snatches—great, jarring snatches that hazed in and out. I don’t know long I stayed there, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds. The Crippling Climax didn’t last long. It just felt like it did.

I regained control of my legs and scrambled upright. I shook, unsteady, before thrashing at the network panel again. It was all part of the Plan. I fired up the monitor and tapped frantically, with as much coherence as I could muster. Everything had to be perfect and it had to be perfectly controllable. Control was tied to my phone.

I heard gunshots, inside the building this time. I finished my business and stepped outside, keeping an eye out for mercenaries. The coast was clear. I screamed out again.

“Eric! I’m here! Come settle your score!”

I fired a round into the brickwork, and another through the window. The glass shattered and fell a long way into the street below. The carnage still hadn’t peaked. A bursting sense of pride filled my chest.

You did this. This is all you. You started this chaos.

I spent a moment soaking in the orange light. The building across had gouts of flame bursting from the windows. Someone tumbled from a balcony, hit the road and was still. I shifted my gaze to the left. Muzzle-flashes peppered the road through the comparative darkness. It was the military, caught way over their heads and surrounded. We’d scavenged what we could, picked the corpses clean. We outgunned them.

Meet the New-New World. Same as the Old-New World.

Screams started up from the street. A cluster of civilians ran, scared and aimless. Their shepherds howled and nipped at their heels. I turned towards the camera.

“I know you’re in there, Strauch. Don’t hide.” My voice morphed into a feral snarl. I took to the stairwell and descended. I slid down the banister, almost giggling. It was a blur down to the fourth floor.

“I’m waiting!”

A guard was dragging himself along the ground. A knife had pinned a piece of paper to his shoulder blade. It read “
Kick Me
”. I stepped behind him and complied, punting him between the legs, before I pulled his head back and smiled for the camera.

“Waiting!” My voice was almost sing-song now. I squeezed the trigger and drenched my hands in blood.

The private elevator pinged and I danced back into the shadows.

This is it this is it time to draw him in and sucker punch all the blood out his body. This is it this is it this is it, come on come on come on let’s go let’s roll let’s boogie I want to do this I want to party let’s bring the thunder. Lock and load.

There was a metallic clank as the doors opened. I hugged the wall and readied myself. The sound of clapping emerged from the corridor.

“This is all very impressive, K.”

I sighed in annoyance and shouted, “Just Fletcher, we’ve been through this.”

“Very impressive. Raise an army from the depths of the filth, invade before the sun rises. Leave a trail of twitching corpses in your wake. Soak the streets in blood. What really impresses me is what you did to my men.”

He stepped into the computer room. I raised my pistol and fired. There was an impact, but he shrugged off the shot. RailTechnology at its finest. I rolled under a desk and leopard crawled to another position. Strauch’s head shifted left and right in search of me. I lifted up and fired again, finding his shoulder. He gave an annoyed grunt. A burst of returning fire shredded the computer next to me, but I was already moving to another spot.

“This is cute, K.”

“Fletcher.”

“What was the most impressive was what happened to my men. They were so well trained, even the ones in the lobby, and all it took was a handful of tweaked-up psychotics to tear through them. We should start hiring from the gutterages.”

I was behind him now. I slowly crept closer. The neck-chink weakness stood out starkly. I was so close.

This is it.

He saw me coming. Maybe I wasn’t quite quiet enough, or a shadow gave the game away. Maybe his helmet had rear-view mirrors. His finger was already pulling the trigger as he swung around; it was my saving grace. I shot him in the arm and leaped to the right, rolling along the carpets. The ringing sounds drowned my movements and I shifted to another spot. I was chipping at his endurance, drib by drab.

“That was a joke. I would never dredge from evil pools like yours.”

“Mighty poetic for a second language speaker. German humour, at its finest.”

I eased upwards and lined up my shot. The bullet caught Strauch in the head. He went down on all fours, swearing in his native tongue. I took the liberty of a second round, but he fired blindly in my direction and I ducked.

He paused and turned before shooting out the light. The darkness deepened, with the only illumination coming from the fire on the streets and the LEDs on the monitors. I was good in the darkness, but I had a feeling that Strauch’s fancy helmet was better.

“That’s cheating, you know.”

“I do not cheat, K.”

              “Fletcher.”

              “I am not the villain here.”

              “Who cares?”

I circled around the edge of the room, but Strauch had merged with the shadows. I slipped my spare hand into my pocket and pressed a button. With a click, every computer in the room turned on. The monitors remained dark, but the LEDs threw a red-green glow everywhere. It was quieter than I expected.

“What happened to hard drives?” I asked. “Don’t they make those anymore?”

Strauch hadn’t been keeping low enough. A broad shadow spread on the far wall, visible in the red-green light. I waited for it to move, and my shot clipped his shoulder.

“I’m winning, Eric. I’m faster than you and sharper than you. I got you in to settle a blood debt alone. I’m going to win.”

I hadn’t expected the laughter, to be honest. Not that breed of laughter. The forced blasé-chuckle of I-Don’t-Care, sure, but not this. This was authentic. I kept quiet and waited for him to continue.

His voice was crisp, even through the helmet. “We have already won, K. Look around you.”

I didn’t bother to correct him. I didn’t like his tone.

“You managed to kill a lot of good men, and a lot of good women. You destroyed a lot of valuable property. You murdered my family.”

“Did it all with a smile.”

“You have done a lot, but we have still won. Look around.”

I swallowed and flicked my gaze to the window. A fire truck trundled down the road, blazing. Water erupted from a broken hydrant. The steam swirled in the night air.

“You’ve got an odd definition of winning.”

“Do we? Weapons down for a second, K. Think about what you have done. When did RailTech really grow?”

RailTech had always been a big player, always. They supplied weapons to BlackWater in Iran and Iraq, equipped the Russians in Georgia and trained crack squads for both sides in Syria. When did RailTech really grow?

2012.

Chaos breeds carnage; carnage breeds terror. Terror leaves people wanting to protect themselves, their families and their interests.

“Twenty-twelve.”

The laughter picked up again. “That is correct. Good. Yet I still fear you missed the real goals behind project four-hundred twenty-nine. The genius was not in the product. We’ve always had the Product here. Project four-hundred twenty-nine was never about the product. It was always about the demand.”

I remained crouched, but my mind spun with computations. Eric kept talking.

“The gutterages have festered for two years, K. Two years of rape and murder and violence. Drug-addled slums. A grim reminder of two-thousand twelve. Is it not time to be rid of them?”

His voice was level now, and infinitely purposeful.

“I think you know about AEROAR. I just think you are unaware of its intended purpose.”

It was almost too much. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I screamed and let off a warning shot. “Would it kill you to use a fucking contraction once in a while? Jesus! Your second language is showing, Strauch.”

The laughter resumed. I’d bought myself a few seconds to think. What had I missed? I heard a rattle from above and saw someone on a rooftop, shooting into the streets. Click.

The plane, rattling overhead again and again and again. It wasn’t transporting, it was spraying. The mall junkies—driven mad by an unknown trigger. What if that trigger was in the air? That twisty, ever-present desperation you felt as you walked through the gutterage. The spontaneous eruption of gunshots and violence as you returned to the Helix.

I spoke slowly. “You… You didn’t just gas John Rourke and the Midnight Hour. You hit the whole gutterage. You—”

              “Crop dusters, K. This is RailTech. We do not deal in small business.”

“You wanted this?”

“Of course. The city is on fire. Crazed addicts spilled in from the gutterage. It needs to be dealt with. Who do you think will get the contract?”

“Of course.” I said it under my breath. My knuckles were white around the grip of my pistol.

“We are just working for the greater good. The world will be a better place once we root out the scum, like you. The world is already on fire, K.”

“RailTech just wants to sell the marshmallows.”

“As we speak, as the city burns, AEROAR is being shipped across the country. In a few scant weeks the other hives will boil over and erupt. This time, the government will allow us to prepare. We are taking the world back, K, we just needed the world to let us. I am not the villain. You are.”

A tight, hot ball of rage built up in my stomach. Strauch’s words made me sick. He was talking about genocide on a massive scale. It was wonderful, but it was RailTech’s genocide. They got the credit.

Not a fucking chance.

This was my revolution. This was
my
fucking revolution. Strauch was not going to take that from me. I pressed the button again, and all the screens flicked on. The room was filled with a red, flickering glow. Strauch stopped talking. I tapped my phone to activate the sound, and the screams began to play over the speakers. There was a wordless burst of noise and Eric started firing wildly. I hit the floor and covered my head.

Glass and plastic rained onto my head as Eric blasted the screens one by one. Every single one was now linked to my phone. The video was on loop, but I didn’t think it would last that long.

I glanced up in between rounds. An arm reached out of the burning truck, slapping at the ground desperately. The gold ring glinted on the index finger. The screaming did not abate. I heard a footstep, nearby, and scrambled into motion. Strauch was not concentrating on me. All he wanted to do was get rid of the images. It was my turn to laugh as I shot him in the back. He grunted and went down again, but I didn’t have time to close in.

“This is me, Strauch. This is my bloodshed, not yours. I caused this.”

He seemed beyond listening, hoisting his assault rifle and spraying my location. I flattened myself again. One screen remained. He took aim and pulled the trigger.

Click. Click. Click.

I soared at him in the proceeding silence, vaulting onto the desk and leaping forwards. I snapped my arm downwards and brought the butt of my pistol into his helmet. His head cracked sideways and we pitched into the ground. His rifle fell from his hands and I kicked it, sending it flying out of the shattered glass and into the street below. I pinned his arms down and grabbed his helmet.

“We’re done.”

I jammed my pistol into the neck space and fired my last two bullets.

For a few seconds, my breathing consumed my world. Blood rushed to my head as I stared at my reflection in the glossy black paint. Red streaked my face from an injury I didn’t recall. I dropped my pistol and gasped, while the sounds of violence filtered through to me.

My reflection shifted and Strauch struck out. His right fist caught me on my chin and I flipped backwards onto the floor. Lights burst into my vision. Strauch got to his feet and kicked me. It wasn’t strong, but I was still reeling. I gasped, winded. I looked up as I heard the sound of tearing Velcro.

Strauch had taken off his helmet. His hair was tangled, his eyes red and puffy. A massive bruise was already forming on his neck. He kicked out again, but I rolled with the force, out of his reach. I reached out and pulled myself up. Strauch dropped something heavy.

“Ceramic neck plating, built today. We learn quickly, K.”

I pulled out my throwing knives, but Strauch covered his exposed head with his forearms. The blades bounced off the armour ineffectively.

“Shit.”

My last resort was the large knife by my belt. I raised it, defensively. Strauch didn’t back down; instead, pulling his own length of steel from his belt. His blade was bigger.

“Shit. Again.”

I jumped forwards, but Strauch fought like a man unhinged. The tip of his weapon snaked through the air and sliced through the folds of my coat. His other hand powered into my face. I sailed backwards again, kicking out to keep him at bay while I found my anchor. Strauch jumped forward and kicked out, but I had already rolled out of his reach. I found my feet again. German frothed and spilled from his lips as he closed in. I picked up a paperweight and flung it at his head, catching him just above the temple. It checked his murderous advance.