London Wild (70 page)

Then he saw it, as he approached another well-lit area. He knew that to be operating at this time of night
, the shop must be fully automated. Shopkeepers tended to value their lives more than just a few extra sales in the middle of a desolate city. It was a huge sign: ‘
Fast Food Fish Restaurant –Open All Night,
’ and it seemed to beckon to him welcomingly, hovering over the road and calling his attention to the row of shops where the pertinent building waited with a smaller version of the same sign above its doors.

Climbing out of his car
, he heard the unmistakable chatter of gunfire. It was close and even made him duck at first, but he soon realized that wherever it was, it was still over a mile away. Hopefully some soldiers had cornered a few cats, but it was only too likely that a group of cats had attacked some civilians.

He turned and walked calmly into the restaurant. If a cat had seen him and was lining up a shot, there was nothing much he could do about it. Chances were that he was the number one target on the cats
’ hit list anyway. And it seemed quite likely that he’d made the hit lists of many humans too. There was no telling how people might react to him, considering what had happened recently.

He wasn’t surprised to see that machines seemed to be controlling everything. S
itting on the middle of the counter was a large box with little more than a speaker to break the monotony of its design. Next to that was a small machine about the size of a small calculator that would take and count the money it was handed and return any change that was required. Next to that was a small sensor, little larger than the size of a pen, which detected when someone was close.

As soon as he entered through the door
, the sensor must have detected him because the box spoke: ‘Good morning, sir. What would you like?’

Charles ordered his meal in clear tones, knowing that if the machine got his order wrong there would be no one here he could actually complain to. He then pull
ed out a small credit card and gave it to the appropriate machine.

It didn’t take too long for his order to be filled, but while he waited, propping
himself up on the counter with his shoulder, he closed his eyes for a few moments and enjoyed the absence of light, all the while resisting his body’s demands for a nap.

Then a trolley with a tray on top of it rolled in from the kitchen. On the tray was a wrapped package, the food Charles had ordered. It stopped at the counter and then with some sort of simple hydraulic system lifted the tray and the food to a height comfortable enough for Charles to take.

As he left the door of the restaurant, a group of six teenagers not far away headed towards him. They all seemed very young. The eldest could’ve been no more than sixteen, if that, whilst the youngest might possibly have been eleven. Two of them seemed to be carrying laser rifles in full view of the public, and neither of them seemed even slightly worried to be doing so. They were moving from shop to shop, all of which were closed apart from the restaurant, chatting nonchalantly and walking as if they owned the street.

They caught sight of Charles as he walked over to his car.

‘Hey,’ one of them virtually shouted, ‘that’s Slim Dorris, the
Cat Killer
.’ If it hadn’t been for the lighting, there would probably have been no way they could have recognized him at such a distance.

‘Are you sure?’ said the one
who seemed to be the youngest of the group. His expression seemed doubtful despite the difference. ‘I seen ‘im on the newspaper.’

‘Me too,’ the first replied
, not looking round. ‘That’s definitely him.’

Although
Charles was tired, his reflexes responded as if to a threat. Charles glanced at the oldest of the group, checking the telltale area that might identify this boy as actually being a cat. Then he checked each of the others in turn. His eyes moved with a skill born of experience. Unless the cats had come up with some new disguise technique that he wasn’t yet aware of, these six were exactly what they appeared to be: children.

He worried for a moment as to what they were doing here. True
, this was a well-lit area and might still be relatively safe in comparison with the rest of the city, as the cats preferred the dark. Then again, since the cats were no longer killing just for food, anyone in such an area would find themselves nicely backlit for a would-be sniper. Anyone in such an area was an easy target. Surely the lack of other people on the street would be a clue to the teenagers that something was wrong. And even if they were too young to understand their danger, which he doubted, the battle he had heard when he had first entered the restaurant was still being fought, and the sound of two other battles had joined the cacophony. There were also lots of little echoes of some more distant clashes, the sounds of which had been all but muffled by those that were closer. And then, to top it all, it was raining, and there was next to no shelter on this side of the road, barring the restaurant he had just vacated.

‘Oi, you! All this trouble in London, this is all
your fault.’ The eldest of the teenagers was yelling right at him now.

Charles stared at the boy for a moment and then decided to ignore him. Inwardly he wondered how many others felt the same way
. Was he still the hero he had been? Was he still the
Great Cat Killer
? Or were people now spitting whenever they spoke his name? He had no doubt that Colonel Davis had something up his sleeve. The Colonel always did; everything he had done and would do was part of some master plan. He just wished he knew what that plan was. Charles hated feeling so much like a pawn every time he did anything.

The only thing that really concerned him about this encounter was the fact that two of the boys were armed
. That made him a little nervous. But he was also armed, even if his laser pistol was currently out of reach in his car. Nevertheless, he was confident that he could handle the six should they get silly and try something, even considering how tired he was feeling. 

He opened the door to his car and climbed in
. Having already checked the boys for the telltale signs of being cats, he didn’t even bother to look at them as they approached his vehicle. Five of them stopped a short way off, hanging back, and they gathered together, obviously nervous and using their numbers to help steady them.

The sixth
and eldest was quite a way ahead of the others, his finger pointing aggressively at Charles as he shouted, ‘I’m talking to you. Don’t you dare ignore me.’

Charles ignored him. He pressed his thumb to the starter and pulled the car out of its little parking spot, turning it to get back on the main road and towards home.

The boy followed him out into the road, ranting and raving. And it seemed he even tried to jump in front of Charles’ car, trying to force its automatic collision sensors into action. But Charles had anticipated that the boy might try something, if not exactly that, and he had planned to give him a wide berth. He was thus able to swerve out of the way and soon he was heading home again, leaving the boys and their frustrations long behind him.

Before long he was h
ome again. The bed seemed to be beckoning strongly to him, but first he wanted to sit down and eat. He had to have some food. He sat down in a comfortable chair in front of the newspaper and turned it on, selecting a story at random and choosing the verbatim selection. He didn’t care what the subject was; he just needed something to keep him company while he ate.

He opened the food package as a report about a coup detat taking place in some
Middle Eastern country, the name of which he had been too busy yawning to pay proper attention to when it was mentioned. He ate quickly at first, his appetite controlling his actions, but as his appetite was sated and his tiredness took control of his body, each mouthful became more and more labored. 

He remembered glancing at the clock that displayed on the top right hand corner of the newspaper as he listened to the story and seeing that it was now just before three. He remembered thinking
that he ought to head to bed soon, because there was no telling how early he might be woken if Colonel Davis wanted him to come in to debrief him on the battle. He remembered the story finishing and the screen returning to the list of headlines.

He was woken by the computer making a loud siren-like noise to wake him. It spoke urgently, as if it had been trying to wake him for a fair while. ‘You must wake up. I have an incoming call from Colonel Davis.’

Charles looked about himself. The remains of the meal he had had last night were on the floor where they had fallen from his lap after he had nodded off. The newspaper was off. The story
, having finished playing, had returned to the headline screen to await selection of the next story. After a while with no input, it would have entered sleep mode, and soon after it had turned itself off completely.

The siren faded as the computer seemed to become aware that Charles was awake. It tried to press the issue
. ‘You have an incoming call.’

‘P-put him through,’ Charles told it, noticing for the first time the awful taste in his mouth. He climbed out of the chair and walked over to the computer screen.

‘Please confirm,’ the computer requested, its voice sounding almost normal.

‘Just do it,’ Charles replied coldly.

The Colonel, whose image appeared on the computer screen, seemed as emotionless as ever as he spoke. ‘Captain, I want to see you at the office no later than seven. Think you can manage that?’

Charles looked around the room for a clock
. Virtually every piece of technology came with a clock, and yet for a moment he struggled to find even one. The newspaper was off. The holoviewa was off. It took him a moment to realize that the link screen itself had a small clock emblazoned on the upper left hand corner. It had just gone six in the morning. He blinked at the clock. He had just enough time for a quick shower before he’d have to leave. After all those hours in the tank, heaven knew he needed a shower. ‘I think I can make it,’ he assured the Colonel.

‘Good,’ the Colonel replied emotionlessly,
‘I’ll see you at seven then. I have new orders for you!’

Charles almost felt like collapsing as he closed his side of the link. He had had at most three hours of sleep. It really wasn’t enough. He had been expecting that call from the Colonel, of course, but he had been hoping that the Colonel would at least wait until the afternoon before calling the meeting.

Oh well, he thought as he staggered slowly into the shower. Maybe the cold water would help to wake him up long enough to survive this meeting.

Charles entered the office, yawning his head off as he did so. Even despite his training, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. There was single chair waiting for him, and so without ceremony he sat down.

There were two other people in the office.
Sitting on a small chair was a man in a deep blue suit. He was spending most of his time looking out the window at the road below. He had black hair, which was receding a little at the temples, and bore a thin moustache on his top lip. There was nothing else too remarkable about him. If anything, he might’ve been an inch taller than Charles, but it was hard to say for sure when both were sitting down.

The second person was, of course, Colonel Davis. He sat behind the desk
, showing every sign that he had not had any problems sleeping while the battle for Sou’nd was being fought. He spoke, his voice even and toneless, and yet perhaps there was a small touch of emotion in the way he spoke this time: ‘Late again, Captain?’

Charles read the time off the small desk clock that sat just in front of the Colonel; it was still only five to seven. Since the meeting had been scheduled for seven, surely there was no real problem. ‘I’m here on time!’
he argued. Under normal circumstances he might have offered his protest more tactfully, but he was still feeling extremely tired.

The Colonel then said, ‘I’ll be meeting with Captain McCain and Lieutenants Peece and Patrick a little later on and giving them their new mission then. With Stage One, the attack on Sou’nd
, now complete, I will be passing the task of Stage Two, the assault on the regional headquarters, to those three.’

‘What about myself, sir? Charles asked.

‘You are out of the loop, Captain. Mister McCain will be in charge of Stage Two. We have other plans for you.’  The Colonel then looked across at the man in the deep blue suit, who seemed far more interested in what was going on outside the window than what was happening inside the room. ‘Before we actually begin, I’d like to introduce you all to Mister Aloysius Stevenson, from the
Bureau of Feline Affairs
. It is his department that originally suggested the master plan we are currently working on in order to rid the country of the cat menace.’

‘Aren’t you in danger of putting yourself out of a job?’ Charles asked.

‘I’m a civil servant,’ Aloysius told him. ‘If my department is disbanded, they’ll find me another place.’ He gave a quick smile and then turned back to the window. ‘Besides, I think they have something lined up to replace our department with once the cats are finally dealt with. I think there’s a new organization in the wings ready to pick up the gauntlet where my current department leaves it, so to speak. No, I’m not too worried about my future with the department.’