No Hero (33 page)

In the trunk, an over-sized fish tank containing Ephie and several of the more adventurous squid sloshes loudly.

“You OK?” Kayla asks. There is something unusually tender in her voice.

“I will be,” Ephie says. Whether it’s prophecy or just a child’s hope, I can’t tell.

I stare at the car’s door handle. I think about using it. I can’t quite build up the nerve. This is different from the other times I’ve gone up against the Progeny. This time there isn’t anger or the sudden blare of adrenaline. This time I’m scared.

Shaw touches my wrist.

“Aim low,” she says. “Toward the gut. You’ll end up shooting higher. Don’t go for head shots. Don’t worry about getting the Progeny. Just slow them down. Their hosts need hearts and lungs just like the rest of us.”

“OK,” I say. And there is something reassuring in that, though I can’t put my finger on exactly what.

“Let’s go,” Shaw says to the car in general.

We go.

Shaw takes point, gripping a pump-action shotgun that looks even more incongruous against her pants suit than the sneakers she’s changed into. Tabitha and I stand behind her to form a rough triangle. We’ve been trusted with pistols. Tabitha’s grip is shakier than mine, but not much.

Kayla moves—a brief flash of motion and then gone. Ephie stays in the car. She’s got a walkie-talkie and I worry, but I think I’d feel like an arse if I asked her to make sure she doesn’t drop it in the tank and electrocute herself.

Gravel crunches beneath our feet. I can see my breath in the air. I wish I’d worn a thicker coat. Which is a minor wish compared to most of the things passing through my head, but even that doesn’t come true.

“Where is everybody?” Tabitha asks. “Should be lights. Guards. People.”

She’s right. Apart from our footsteps the place is eerily quiet. And I don’t know the answer, and I don’t want to know the answer. Apparently neither does Shaw, because she keeps leading us forward without a word.

There is a crunch of gravel to our right and we all spin. Shaw pumps her gun with a loud “ker-chunk.”

It’s Kayla.

“Voices,” she says. “Movement.” She points to another of the cooling towers.

“There?” I say

“Inside.” She goes three steps forward and then pauses, waits for us to catch up to her. And then I realize Kayla is scared too. Because as furious and as bloodthirsty as she is right now, she’s not charging in alone.

Because she knows she can’t save Ophelia. Someone else has to.

Me.

No pressure.

A flight of industrial-looking steel stairs leads up the side of the cooling tower to a small gray door set into the mass of sloping concrete. We climb as silently as we can, wincing each time a footstep rings out on the metal steps. Kayla waits silently at the top.

I can feel my heart beating slow and hard in my chest. My breath and footsteps coming at the same steady intervals. My body is drumming a steady funeral march.

I check the safety on my gun at the top of the stairs. It’s off this time.

We’re not high up, only thirty feet or so off the ground but I can see the countryside stretching off away from here, I can see the village of Didcot, low houses, fields and hedges, a small copse of trees. I can see the glow of Oxford as a yellow haze on the horizon. I can see the car we drove here in, the silhouette of Ephie in the boot. I remember why we’re doing this, what we’re fighting for.

Clyde’s in there. My friend’s in there. A little girl is in there, and she needs to be saved. We’re going to fix this.

Kayla’s hand is on the door handle. Shaw checks each of our faces one by one.

“Let’s do this,” I say.

So we do.

Kayla turns the door handle slowly, silently. Her hand doesn’t even quiver. The mechanism doesn’t squeak. Smooth. Silent. My heart crashes in my chest. The handle completes its descent. We all stand there. Waiting. One. Two—

Kayla slams her shoulder into the door. The lock gives with a short, sharp crack. Steam billows out as the door flies open. We push forward into its enveloping clouds.

For a moment I can see nothing, can feel nothing, can just taste the steam, a thick foul flavor coating my nose and mouth, sticking my hair to my scalp. We blink and cough.

Then light—sudden and abrupt. Spotlights coming on from all directions, casting the base of the tower in a sudden white glow. I shield my eyes, trying to see.

At first it’s just shadows, shapes, holes in the blinding field of light. But not for long. Not for long enough. Because then I see what we’re up against.

In the center of the room stand Olsted and the runner. Olsted with an oddly youthful energy in his old body. The runner—tall and languid, thin limbs swaying slightly. Clouds of steam come up through the grill-like floor, partially obscuring the Progeny, making them almost ethereal. In-between the pair stands Ophelia. She is not bound, is not held by either of them. She stands calmly There is a little color in her cheeks. Her dress and hair have dried somewhat. Apparently she’s OK out of water now. If that’s part of her evolution as a dreamer or because of the humid atmosphere, or because of some other fact that would cause my brain to perform gymnastics it never trained for, I’m not sure. She is taller than I imagined her being from seeing her in the pool.

Between us and them—a hundred or more of their magic-twisted creatures. And I think I know where the staff of this place have gone. Overalls are stretched and splayed over pulsing slabs of muscle, are wrapped in ragged strands around mutated limbs, around arms become thick and branching, arms that end in flapping tentacles, in snapping claws, in groups of hands, around legs that end in hooves, in thin wiry tendrils, in vast splaying roots of flesh, in circular pods with a hundred toes waving in some unknowable pattern, around necks topped with overgrown baby heads, with ape-heads, with Neanderthal heads, heads with lizard skin, with eight arachnid eyes, with fractal insect eyes, necks topped by skulls crushed and whole. An impossible number of people with impossible forms.

Surrounding them, surrounding us, the arching walls of the cooling tower have been plastered with paper. Every inch of the concrete has been covered. The Progeny even taped them to the railing of walkway we’re standing on. They’re scattered on the floor grills, blown about by the wafting steam, caught around the legs of the field of monsters before us. Pink paper. The same image printed on it, over, and over, and over.

It’s a black-and-white picture of a young girl’s head. Half her head. Half is whole, anyway. One whole eye staring out from the field of pink. The other half is crushed almost beyond recognition. A mess of bone fragments and blood. It’s a head I’ve seen before. But when I saw it last it was propped between the shoulders of a monstrously transformed student. And Kayla saw it even before that, saw it on top of her sister’s shoulders when she lifted the rolling pin back up.

It’s everywhere. It’s an overwhelming experience even for me.

“Shiiiiiiiiii—” The word hisses out of Tabitha, never quite managing to reach the “t.”

I look to Kayla. She stands perfectly still, unflinching.

“Kayla,” I say. Then again, louder. “Kayla!”

“Hello, Arthur.” Olsted’s voice booms across the room. “Tabitha. Director Shaw.”

The monsters stir, a rumble of breath, half-muttered roars of pain or rage.

“Kayla!” I shake her by the shoulder. It’s like pushing on a tree stump. Her jaw is working slightly. I can’t make out the words.

“Welcome to our little show.” Olsted smiles, gives a little bow, the perfect circus ringmaster. “It’s going to be one hell of a night.”

A little too much emphasis on “hell” for my liking. I put my hands over Kayla’s eyes and bellow her name into her ear. A soft moan seems to well up from deep inside her.

“What do you think we’ve been doing inside that skull there, Arthur, my lad?” booms Olsted, his voice bouncing off the circular wall, coming at me from all directions. “Why do we keep throwing ourselves at Kayla? We do hold on in her head for a second or two, you know. Our children do have a moment with her before they go on. Enough to strengthen a couple of neurological links, weaken others. Strengthen a response to an image, for example.” He grins, showing each one of his little yellow teeth. “No matter her will, she cannot take seeing her sister’s face. She’s quite lost to you.”

“We need to get out of here.” Shaw’s voice, low and urgent.

“No shit.” Tabitha.

“We can’t leave Kayla.” Me. I almost surprise myself. But we need her. We really do. This won’t go our way without her.

“But,” Olsted carries on, “I’m not here to wag my chin all night. There are celebrations to be had. Games to play. Little mice to chase.” He throws his head back to stare at the sky. “A panoply of delights.”

The monsters are restless now. They shift on their feet, leaving eddies in the steam that drifts above their heads.

“Now, Arthur,” Tabitha hisses.

“We can’t leave her,” I say again. But they’re right too. We can’t stay here. We’re screwed if we stay here. This is a trap.

“Let the dance begin,” howls Olsted.

The monsters move. A great surging of limbs. They bay, and howl, and scream, and shout.

“Go!” Shaw yells.

I grab Kayla around the waist, hoist her bodily into the air. She’s stiff as a board, still muttering, “Already dead. She was already dead. Not me. She was—”

I stagger around. I can already hear feet smashing down the walkway.

Behind us a monstrous hand is heaving a monstrous body up over the railing.

I totter backward. Shaw is yelling something. Tabitha’s feet beat a fast tattoo down the stairs. I smack Kayla into the doorframe and we spin around. Out in the cold night air, I smash into another railing. I can see a vast clawed hand emerging from the steam. Kayla’s body pitches forward over the railing and it’s a thirty-foot drop to earth. The air seems to vibrate with inhuman growls. A body follows the fist emerging from the steam. I grab desperately at Kayla, but my hands are shaking. Shaw yells. Tabitha yells. I snag Kayla’s collar, lose my footing. Then something massive brushes my back. A fingertip, a knuckle, something—and my feet go, and Kayla falls, still stiff as a store mannequin, and I fall, pivoting around her body until we crash to the ground far too far below.

I bite gravel as Tabitha and Shaw hit the last step of the stairs. My lip bursts open and I taste dirt and blood. The stiff weight of Kayla’s body slams into my back driving my head down even as I try to raise it. Then someone has my hand, is pulling me up. Shaw. I struggle to help her, to find my feet. Tabitha is next to me, shoving Kayla’s rigid form into shadows.

“No time!” Shaw yells, still pulling me away. I rip my hand out of hers, drop to my knees, grab the pistol, and then all three of us are tearing pell-mell away from the tower as monstrosity after monstrosity bursts out after us.

For a moment it’s just my feet, and my heartbeat, and my fear—all thundering in my ears. The gravel shifts beneath my feet, and it’s almost like I’m flying. Footsteps barely finding traction, but I’m going so fast I can’t even fall. And behind me, I know, the monsters are gaining.

“Not to the car,” Shaw says. “Don’t lead them to Ephie.”

Part of me hates her for that. For pulling the hope out from under my feet. But part of me admires her. Because she’s right. Because it’s the right thing to do. Hell, it’s the heroic thing to do. It’s what Kurt bloody Russell would do. Because right now, Ephie is about the only hope we have. An ace it could take years to pull out of the hole. But if she buys it, well then the world has really bought it.

We break left, and I skid, turn half on my feet, half on my hands, like a motorcyclist taking a corner at speed, and then somehow I’m back upright and moving again. There is a baying behind me. Like wolves. Like hounds. Like something gone horribly bloody wrong. Like tonight.

Of course the cooling tower was a trap. They’ve planned all of this for years. And they knew we would come. So they planned for us. And they pulled us into that place—a powder keg primed to blow Kayla’s mind. And while we’ve escaped, now our biggest gun is down, and we’re about thirty seconds from becoming canapés.

Wait. Scratch that. Four seconds.

More monsters from the left. Blindsiding us. I rediscover the pistol in my hand. Raise it. Fire point blank into something wide and snapping and terrible. The muzzle flare supplements the moonlight. Strobe-flash glimpses of the thing that’s trying to kill me today reeling away. And I wish I hadn’t seen it after all. I can feel its blood trickling down my face. But there’s no time.

Shaw uses the shotgun to blow open a door, and I follow her. Behind us, something smashes a hole larger than the doorway, like something from a cartoon, except when a cartoon character does it I don’t have the urge to soil my pants.

Focus. It’s easy for my mind to wander away right now, to pretend this isn’t happening. To just react. But I need to focus. Because I need to go—

—right! Right! Duck! Under a swinging fist that comes out of nowhere. And then Shaw is pulling me left, through another door. And I glimpse more things pouring down a corridor toward us. I fire my pistol with my eyes shut. I don’t want a closer look. I hear screams, and caws, and howls. Another entrance, this building has too many entrances.

“Another building,” I say.

“I know,” Shaw breathes.

“They knew we were coming,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

“Clyde wasn’t with them,” Tabitha says, her speech punctuated by great inhalations.

“Too much talking,” Shaw says.

“Ophelia was there,” I say. And there’s something in that. They weren’t afraid to show us Ophelia. She was part of the trap. Part of the bait.

But they didn’t show us Clyde.

Why would they hide Clyde?

“They’re not summoning the Feeders in from the cooling tower,” I say.

Shaw’s shotgun booms and we kick through another door.

“What?” Tabitha’s voice.

“Clyde,” I say. “They’re using Clyde. We need to find Clyde.”

“We need to not die,” says Shaw. She looses more shells into the night. I catch flashes of things falling away. I see blood from a long gash on her cheek. I’ve no idea where it came from.