“I’m not taking it anymore; ‘Lizzie do this. Lizzie, do that. Liz, get me some coffee.’ Well, I’m not your slave. I’m not just some dog who does things to command. I’m a person, too.” Her hand shook slightly as she held the gun steady and pulled the trigger. There was bang as the bullet coursed through the air and then the handgun dropped to the floor from a slack hand. “No…” she sobbed.
Mika brushed Robyn’s hair over one shoulder and fastened the necklace claso at the back of her neck. It was a delicate silver chain with a crystal-flecked heart; an expensive piece of jewellery that hadn’t been very easy to get. It had taken them weeks to get the pendant from a young woman called Annie – weeks of tracking, torture and following the girl around half of the globe. “Do you remember how we got this necklace?” he asked.
“Annie,” Robyn remembered. “She was fun.”
Mika reached out to the shelf and put his dark shades on. “Annie nearly got us killed. She wasn’t very smart, though, as I remember.”
Robyn walked her fingers up Carly’s spine and watched her as she began to wake from her deep, dreamless slumber. Carly had been unchained and allowed to lie on a fold-away bed for now. “What are you doing?” she yawned. “I’m trying to sleep here.”
Robyn placed her hand on Carly’s shoulder and gently shook her until she was fully awake. “Wake up.”
She opened her eyes and found herself staring up into Robyn’s pretty face. “What?” She gripped the edge of the thin mattress and pulled herself into a sitting position. “I was having my first proper nap in three days. Why did you wake me up?”
“Partly because it’s fun for us,” Mika began. “And partly because we’re going out. We don’t want you escaping or calling for help now, do we? Robyn?”
She happily snapped a metal cuff around Carly’s wrist and pulled on the chain attached firmly to the ceiling to make sure it was fixed tight. Mika left the room to fins the car keys and left Robyn with Carly. She felt for the black strip of material on the floor and pulled it tight in front of her eyes.
“Don’t put that thing on me again. I can’t breathe properly with it… and I can’t help you if I’m dead.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn about evil.” The black rag now tightly knotted, Robyn brushed the side of Carly’s neck. The girl let out a tiny scream of fright at her ominous touch and felt her eyes fill with tears she didn’t think she had left. She didn’t care that Robyn might cut her and lick her blood again – she just wanted to be left alone. As if she had read Carly’s thoughts, Robyn took her hand away and swept through the door, closing it tight and locking it behind her.
Robyn opened the car door and slid into the plush, leather driving seat of the sleek, black convertible that they had stolen from a showroom a few evenings previously. Turning the key in the ignition, she listened to the engine turn over before pressing down on the accelerator.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mika asked her gently, watching the streets o
pass by.
“I don’t understand. Why do they want to keep it a secret?”
“I’m not sure, but we’ll find out soon enough.”
Robyn slowed the car at a busy t-junction in the road, and leaned out to see what the hold-up was. It was nothing more than a car crash in which one car had reversed into another, but Robyn drove the car over the grass to watch the two drivers argue it out. “I can feel it from here.”
“Feel what, baby?” asked Mika, disinterested in the argument on the street. He looked out of the other window at the row of shops with their lights twinkling in the darkening evening sky.
“So much rage and heat. It rushes around… getting hotter and hotter… until it explodes. Boom!” She chuckled to herself and untangled her long, straight hair from Mika’s hands. “They don’t know how to control it like we do. It spirals.”
Mika frowned at her and put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll make it right soon. When we get to the Crash Room and find what we need, we’ll turn everything back to normal.”
Robyn started the engine again and put her foot down. “Heaven on Earth. What’s wrong with the world the way it is?”
“Nothing… from our point of view. But they want to get rid of us and anyone remotely like us. Every living thing that has or plans to harm someone else.”
“The monsters,” Robyn muttered, remembering how Carly had referred to them in their conversation. “To rid the world the world of monsters.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “They’re too wrapped up in their own world that they can’t see that we’re actually doing them a favour by keeping the population down.” Mika pushed himself off the seat with his feet and sat on top of the headrest so he could pick up the dozens of scents of a busy city on the breeze. “Fear, anger, love, passion… and diesel,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the rancid stench of diesel fumes from the car in front. As breathing was optional for him, it wasn’t much of a problem for Mika to close his nose off to the smell and slide back down into his seat.
“Take your feet down,” Robyn reprimanded him. “The seats are getting dirty.” She really wasn’t bothered about the upholstery getting ruined, but, like many people, she found that focusing on insignificant things helped her deal with big issues – like the plan. She fixed her eyes on the road ahead and kept driving, trying not to let her thoughts dwell on the enormous task ahead. It was easier to fixate on little problems that could be solved in a minute than one huge problem she didn’t fully understand. Robyn tightened her burnt and blistered hands around the steering wheel, relishing the self-inflicted pain.
Mika stroked the hand nearest to him and Robyn pulled her hand away involuntarily. He let his hand linger on the wheel for a moment, then withdrew it and resorted to drumming his fingers on the dashboard. He didn’t understand why Robyn didn’t want to be touched but made no comment on it. “I think you’re right,” he said as they sped towards a crash scene. Some people were injures, the rest were either standing around watching, or fighting. “Things are getting more violent.”
“I like it,” she grinned. “The pain is beautiful. All different colours – always changing.” She braked suddenly, and for no apparent reason. She closed her eyes and just listened to the sounds of the accident: shouting, screaming, crying, crunching metal, horns blasting and other cars roaring past – a welcome sound… to a point. “It’s wrong. It shouldn’t be like this.” With one hand, Robyn took the heart pendant, put it in her mouth and sucked on it.
“No, it shouldn’t.” He had enough compassion to feel like he should do something about it. People weren’t generally like this; whatever Robyn always said was changing had definitely changed and affected them. Mika felt it too – a part of him telling him to get out of the car and have fun. Mika climbed over the door and began to walk towards the scene of the accident.
“Mika? Where are you going?” whined Robyn, not wanting to be left alone. “Don’t leave me.” She remembered what had happened last time they had been in a situation like this – even though it had only been a dream.
Carly grunted as she pulled on her chains again – they weren’t coming any looser, but that didn’t stop her from trying. She tensed her wrist and pulled herself up to hand level so she could pull the gag out. The black piece of material was pulled much tighter than before and it took her a while to pull it down to her throat. Her muscles hadn’t been used in days, and the lactic acid build up made her arms tired. She pulled on the chains again but to no avail. If she turned her head, she could see the metal key lying on the shelf, purposely left just out of her reach. “You’re doing a really good job of making frustrated as hell,” she said to the ceiling. Talking to herself kept her sane.
“Great. You leave me here in chains, with no daylight, and –“ her eyes fell on the broken body of the computer salesman. “And a dead body for company.” She didn’t feel sorry for the man or his
family, nor was she glad that it wasn’t her. She now hated the fact that she was more or less incapable of feeling emotion. Carly strained her chains to the limit and reached for the key – stretching, stretching. But it was just a hairs breadth out reach. “If I was evil, would I keep a spare?” she asked herself. “No, of course I wouldn’t because evil people never do. Which brings us back to the question of how I reach the damn thing.” Carly knew that it was a little… strange to be having a conversation with herself, but found the found the possibility of having a conversation with dead Adam too disturbing to even contemplate. “No offence, but you’re not the best conversationalist.”
Her blood-stained top felt stiff against her flesh but it didn’t bother her, nor did she care that blood was trickling along her arm from where the metal cuff had cut into the back of her left wrist. To be honest, she barely noticed. Her mind was filled with images of Ricky. “Ricky?”
“Carly,” said a voice behind her. “I’m here.”
She turned around and looked for him, but there was no-one there. “Ricky. Where are you?”
“Where I always am. In your heart.” A ghostly image of Ricky drifted out of her body and slowly took on a more solid form.
“I thought you were dead and in Heaven, or somewhere.”
“I am and I should be.”
“So why aren’t you?”
“Because you won’t let me go,” he answered. “You keep holding on.”
“Ricky, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“I know,” he assured her, looking at bloodied top she hadn’t realised she was still wearing. “I’m glad you let me die.”
“Glad? Why?”
Ricky gestured to her bloody clothes and looked around. “Because, now, I don’t have to live with what’s coming.”
Carly frowned at him, not understanding his cryptic words. “What’s coming? I don’t know what you mean.” She reached out for his outstretched hand – and her hand passed straight through his. “That makes sense. You’re some kind of hallucination.”
“Follow me.” He walked over to a row of bushes, Carly followed closely behind him and moved the branches to one side. “Do you remember this night?”
Cars were speeding along the four-lane road they were looking out on. The bright lights of the shops on the other side of the road were twinkling against the dark night sky. Fallen gold and red autumn leaves were dancing across the pavement, blown in all directions by the wind. People were hurrying to and fro with bags of late night shopping, or empty-handed on a night out. “Of course I do. It was our first anniversary last year. We walked home because we didn’t have any money for a taxi,” she remembered. “We spent it all in the video arcade. Just walking together was so romantic. It was –“
“Perfect,” he finished. “Yeah, it was.” Ricky stretched his arm out and sweot ir over the road in al slow arc. “Now look at it.”
They were still looking out on the same stretch of road but, instead of cars flying past, they were backed up as far as the eye could see. There was a huge car smash in front of them, and many drivers, passengers and pedestrians were lying on the ground, injured and screaming for pain relief. Dozens of bystanders had started fighting with each other. “Isn’t anyone trying to help?”
“They’re trying. No-one was prepared for this – no-one was ready, Carly.”
Carly looked out at the riot on the street, horrified at how bad things had gotten already. “This isn’t my fault. It can’t be.” She turned back to look at Ricky. “It can’t be my fault.”
“You can’t change what is, only what will be.”
Gunshots sounded in the air – they sounded like they were coming from all directions – and Ricky began to fade away. “Wait!” Ricky stopped fading and hovered in the air, his feet a few inches off the grass.
“What? I can’t stay here forever.”
“I just want to say goodbye.” She didn’t get the chance before. “I love you so much – more than you’ll ever know. I’d give anything for them not to have killed you but…”
“You can’t change what is, only what will be,” he repeated, in a softer voice.
“Ricky?” She looked around but Ricky was gone. Carly gasped as she felt ghostly fingers circle her heart and put her hand to her chest – Ricky lived in her heart because she couldn’t let him go. She needed to hold on to something. Something to make her feel human through her numbing ordeal.
And suddenly she was back in her bare, lightless room, hanging from her chains. “Oh –“
“Fuck,” muttered Mika as he hauled a young girl out of a burning car. “Burnt my hand.” Ignoring the heat given off by the growing flame, he reached back into the car and grabbed her baby brother with his other hand. Both were alive but, while the girl had several broken bones and deep cuts, the baby had miraculously remained relatively unhurt. He carried the children over to a patch of road he had cleared, and laid them down next to some of the other injured people, most of whom were bleeding heavily. The rich, deep red liquid was pooling together to form one large puddle of blood. Something told him to crouch down next to the crying baby and succumb to the temptation. Its pull was so strong – irresistible – almost calling out to him, begging him to drink. Mika got down onto his knees and lowered his head to the young child. “It’s okay.” He heard the sound of a fresh fight breaking out behind him and lifted his head. Rolling his eyes, Mika rose from the ground and listened to them for a second.
“This is all your fault!”
There was more shouted dialogue between the people behind him, but Mika was too busy looking at his hands to listen. When he had put his lands on the ground earlier, he had put his hands in the expanse of blood in the road. Only his knuckles had blood on. He stared at them as if they were alien to him, then sucked at them until the blood came off. “Ahhh!” He said, blowing the word out like he had just lit up a cigarette. He could even tell which person the blood had come from – he craved more like an alcoholic craves whisky. He turned around to pull the fighters apart, a hungry, animalistic look in his eyes, when a woman stopped him mid-spin.
A few hundred yards away, well out of the danger area, Robyn sat back in her leather drivers seat watching the commotion on the street. “This is just the beginning.” A wide smile spread across her face as she thought of the fun Mika must be having in all the confusion. Absently, she toyed with the thin silver chain of her necklace.
“You’re shot,” said the dreadlocked American. “Let me bandage that for you before you lose too much blood.”
He looked down at his t-shirt where there was a round, blood-edged bullet hole, and clamped his hand over it. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Look, you’ve done some nice work here: getting people out of their cars, stopping fights. But you’re no good to anyone injured.” She looked at him and Mika stared back at her.
The bullet wound wouldn’t do him any lasting damage, but the woman wasn’t to know that. He didn’t even know that he had been shot until she remarked on it – in fact he could hardly feel it now. “I don’t think it’s gone in deep.”
“So it shouldn’t take long to get patched up.” She turned around to get some bandages but, when she turned back, he was gone. “Hey!”
Mika made his way out of the melee, pushing people away if they dared to cross his path. The call to feed was too strong to stand against and only decades of practice had allowed him to fight it for this long. Yet, this was no ordinary want to drink. It was as if there was some little voice inside his head encouraging him to do wrong, only temporarily counter-acted by the knowledge that the voice was not his own.
“Mika, you’re hurt.” Robyn reached over to him and held her hand a few inches above his bullet wound. “Who hurt you?”
“Haven’t got a clue.” Mika lifted up his t-shirt, reached into his stomach and pulled out the silver ball-bearin
g. “Not even a proper bullet.”
“Shall I kiss it all better?”
Mika stared at her as he threw the ball-bearing to the ground and heaved himself into the passenger seat. “Robyn, baby. Just drive,” he pleaded, only now feeling the effects of the harmless-looking projectile that had apparently torn a gash in some internal organ or other. “I think I’ve punctured something important.” He grimaced as Robyn revved the engine, certain that the wound would have partially, if not completely, have healed by the time they reached their destination.
After being given a quick run down of who was still in the building, Johnny sat down and switched on his small, portable TV. He could only get a decent reception on two channels, and both were showing old films he had seen before, but he left one of them on anyway to ward off the quiet. Idly he glanced at the monitor and flipped through the cameras, satisfied that no unauthorised people were inside.
He hadn’t yet received his uniform and had dressed in black again. He took his two standard issue pistols from his belt and checked the barrel. Against David’s advice, he had filled the barrel with six live bullets and not left any spaces empty. He blew away some dist that had come from his pocket and affectionately ran his finger around the round edge. “Magic,” he muttered. Chuckling to himself, Johnny shot his arm out to the side and trained the gun on an imaginary target in the distance. “Got a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it,” he bit off to himself. He turned the gun inwards and brought it back to eye-line. “It’s a thing of beauty.”
His attention was drawn to a spider who was scuttling across the floor and using his shoe as a bridge. “Come here, you little bastard.” He shook the arachnid off of his shoe and moved his chair slightly further away so he could get a good aim. The gun was still in his hand and Johnny considered shooting. “Nah. That’d just be a waste of a good bullet.” Putting the gun back on the desk, he raised his foot and brought it back down, audibly crushing every bone in its’ round little body. Johnny had never liked spiders much – not since he’d seen a friend bitten by one on a school trip to Australia – but he wasn’t scared of them. To Johnny, they were just nasty, pointy-toothed animals that deserved to die. He kicked the flattened spider under the desk and tried to forget it was there. “Dave!” he shouted to the evening security guard who had been changing into his regular clothes.