Bad Dreams (40 page)

‘Now, bitch,’ he said, ‘we play my games.’

‘Fuck you, Rote!’

‘No, Cazie, fuck
you
!’

Then he was on her.

* * *

The convoy of unmarked trucks was two hours out of an indeterminate-looking site in South London. Private-Equivalent Willard Longendyke had no idea where he was being deployed, and did not much care.

He had other priorities. Like the Need. Like the three highly unauthorized, non-regulation-issue needles in his inside top pocket.

The men in the back of his truck sat quiet, checking their weapons and the seals on their suits. There was none of that camaraderie shit in the teams, with everyone whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’ or talking about the folks back home.

If you were in the Covert Security Division, chances were you were the brand of dude the folks back home did not miss that much.

Sergeant-Equivalent Bosworth, the Bozz Man, was walking up and down the truck, steadying himself by getting hand-holds on the hanging ropes, performing one of his interminable snap inspections.

Longendyke would pass. He was careful about shit like that. He had to be.

The backs of his hands had been crawling for hours, though. His missing pill was phantom throbbing.

He always got that way when he was close to the Need.

Fuckin’ Panama.

It had been enough to give anybody the Need. A couple of rounds in his leg and one missing testicle were adequately qualified to jack up the pain level beyond belief, and when Sergeant Gomez Gomez came around with a sweet little package of sugar to take all the nasties away, the way ahead had been clear. Just ease into a big blue vein and depress the plunger, and liquid dynamite squirts all round your body, giving you the biggest all-over hard-on you ever experienced.

The first time he flew, in the Canal Zone foxhole, he had jerked off until his remaining ball was dry and shrivelled as a raisin. He knew not what cocktail of meth, H and coke Gomez Gomez had cooked up in his home brew, but it sure made jacking off into a lifetime-experience. A couple more jabs like that, and he would pick up milkmaid’s wrist, or whatever repetitive stress injury you could get from, as they say in the Yew Kay, wanking like the clappers.

Since then, he had been onto the shit like Wile E. Coyote onto the menu in a Kentucky Fried Road Runner restaurant.

This gig had come up suddenly, and his beeper had beeped while he was making his connection. That had nearly queered the deal, but Merv the Medicine Man knew who his best customers were. Longendyke had even concluded the hand-over before reporting to the Bozz Man.

That was a mercy. Otherwise, he would have been crawling the walls before the teams were in the field. That might get noticed. Once he had his jab, he would be okay. The situation would become a cool breeze. He always liked to fly into the field. It had not got him killed yet. In the Zone, he had heard a brasshat say that some of the best Medal of Honour winners were stoned to the gills when they did their guts and glory thing.

Next to Longendyke, Tripps tried on his filter faceplate, pulling his hood around it. These Zombie outfits were guaranteed against radiation, infection, herpes, measles, BSE and the Black Death. In the teams, they were called ‘all-over rubbers’.

He wondered if the Lynch-Mob would be top dog on this operation. That Brit was one scary officer. Longendyke had been under him at a terrorist gig in the Med. Lynch had gone Rambo and cleaned up a whole nest of towelheads by himself. None of the hostages had come out alive, but the stuff that counted – UCC papers or some shit like that – had been turned over neatly to the company suits.

The Bozz Man looked him over, and went on to Tripps.

Longendyke’s non-ball was a blob of pain in his groin. He kept shifting his seat, but it was no good. The Need was hotting up.

Fuckin’ Panama.

With TWA and Pan-Am and that instantaneous matter transmission device everyone
knew
the goddamn Government bought up and hid away from the public use, who in the name of Johnny Carson’s sister’s black cat’s ass needed a goddamn canal anyway.

Just a groove in the ground with mud and water and ships in it. Shit, was all. Shit, shit, shit…

He had been tagged as a casualty while he was in the latrine. Fuckin’ crapper exploded under him. They never found his surplus
cojone.
Everybody said sorry. Even the Prezz sent a sorry telegram. But sorry had not cut the cocaine. Sorry and a flag-waving procession had meant a damn sight less than the massive pay hike UCC offered veterans who did not ask questions. He was fresh out of patriotic zeal and, besides, his Need was getting real expensive and the salary cheque kept his connections happy.

He had never been to England before, and so that was a trip in itself. The CDS was a supra-national outfit with sites in London, Marseilles, New York State, San Bernardino, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Canberra, Malmo, Prague, Osaka and the Antarctic. UCC was registered as a Bahaman corporation for tax purposes, but its head offices were London, New York and Tokyo. Despite his designer cockney accent, Josh Unwin was an American citizen.

‘Shape up,’ the Bozz Man shouted as the truck jumped a bit, obviously rolling off the regular road.

‘Remember, this is not an assault. You will take your positions with no discharge of weapons. There will be a parcel of civs in the vicinity, and you are not unduly to throw a fright into them.’

Everyone nodded. Tripps pulled off his mask, and let it hang at his throat.

The truck rolled to a halt, and the Bozz Man threw back the doors.

The team got out in an orderly fashion, and assembled for inspection. The other trucks, six of them, were parked in a row, their complements lining up outside.

He realized they were on a college campus. Young people with books were watching the team assemble. There were buildings all around, and trees and lawns.

Longendyke’s skin reacted badly to the sunlight. As he straightened up, blinking, adjusting to the new environment, he desperately wanted to creep off somewhere and have his jab.

He saw the Lynch-Mob looming out of a building, trailing civilian cops. The Bozz Man and all the other NCO-equivalents lined up to lick ass and salute. Lynch passed out orders, and Longendyke knew just from the feel of the place that there would be blood spilled. He could always tell as soon as his boots hit the turf.

Right now, it was a stroll in the park. Later, it would be a hell on earth. The Need was constant, eating him away inside, gnawing at his brain. The needles were burning a hole under his Zombie suit.

* * *

Rote was going to make the bitch pay for Templeton, Higgitt and Robyn Askew. And for fucking up a simple raid.

She was strong, no doubt about that. Stronger than she should be, but she could not hope to match him.

In the army, when he was a kid, he had discovered wrestling. Not the namby-pamby showoff stuff costumed clowns got up to on Saturday afternoons on the telly, but the hard, fast, high-contact sport that went back to Ancient Greece. They had kicked him off the squad for breaking too many arms, and out of the army for selling not-yet-surplus equipment.

Since then, he had had the Cause. He hated people a lot, and he had no qualms about smashing them down if they were Evil.

Cazie was Evil, no doubt about that.

Killing her was not enough. She had to be broken first. Humbled.

She broke his hold, and twisted under him, but he whipped his arms under hers and got a full nelson, his knotted fists pressing her head flat against a stair. He got his knee in the small of her back.

To do what he had to do to her, he would have to free his hands long enough to unbuckle his belt and wriggle out of his jeans. That would give her a chance.

He let her head up, and hammered it down again. She did not say anything, but her body remained taut beneath him, not relaxed. She was not out. He hit her head against the stair again. And again. And again.

She was losing it, he could tell. There was blood all over the place. He had probably roughed up her face. That did not matter. He was not going to rape her because she was pretty.

Rote slipped his arms free and undid his belt. He pulled it out of his jeans, and held it up in one fist like a bullwhip. It might come in handy. Then he dropped his denims. He had had a hard on since he had first grabbed Cazie by the ankles.

The bitch was going to take it every way he could think of, and he could think of plenty.

Groggily, Cazie raised herself on her elbows, and turned her head to look up at him. There was blood on her face, but he could not see any disfiguring wound. Shame.

He lashed out with his belt, and caught her across the shoulders. It did not stop her moving. She rolled over onto her back, and wiped her bloody fringe out of her eyes.

‘Do you feel like a man, Rote?’

He did not answer.

‘Like a great big bull of a man?’

She touched her breasts with her hands, leaving red smears like zebra-stripes. Her ribs shifted as she breathed.

The fight had gone out of her. All she had left was words.

‘Come on and rape me then, Tarzan. Let’s see if you’ve got the dick for it.’

He whipped her again, three times crosswise.

Then she caught the belt, and tugged. He fell forwards onto her, his body on hers.

He pulled his arm back to deliver a blow…

…but she had him by the testicles.

‘Let’s see if you’ve got the…’

She pushed his chest hard, forcing him away from her, but her other hand still gripped hard.

‘…BALLS!’

There was a white-hot sunburst of agony between his legs, and he felt his bowels letting go.

She was flinging him across the room as easily as he had flung the rabbit away last night.

He hit the corkboard and collapsed.

His vision was messed up now. Lines of purple and orange squiggled on the surface of his eyes. He was emptying through a hole in his groin. He felt himself sinking.

‘What’s the matter, Tarzan? Want your dick back?’

She stood over him now, bending close, her breath on his face. She touched him, touched his throat, his chin, forcing his jaws open.

Then she pushed her fistful of meat into his mouth, and he could not breathe any more.

He knew she was watching him die.

* * *

Sparks was in the Infirmary, Monica was ‘in a meeting’, and Brian was in a dilemma.

From what Sparks’s sidekick at Security had told him, things were likely to get serious. His old boozing buddy was down with a skull fracture, possible brain damage, and some weird kind of throat wound. Someone had given him a major bashing with the proverbial blunt instrument, and – after that – something else had had a good go at ripping
(chewing?)
his windpipe out.

Brian had tried to get through to Monica, but her V-P was running interference for her. He thought back for a while to the days when he had written a pamphlet entitled ‘Fuck the Establishment’ and seriously talked about fire-bombing US Army bases, and knew he could not keep this quiet. He would have to rat on Monica’s Animal Lib friends. There was no rabbit alive worth killing a man for.

He could not go straight to the police – after all, he was going to want to cover his arse on ‘lending’ Cazie the keys. That meant he had to see Jackson.

Ernest Jackson, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, was a wet liberal from way back. Brian had always thought him a decent man. Even when the students felt the need to burn him in effigy he had kept his sense of humour. But, deep down, Brian knew the V-C was a quivering civil servant who would preserve his position at the expense of anything.

This was going to be a mess.

And Jackson was keeping him waiting. Brian had not even worked up any interest in flirting with Gabrielle, Jackson’s stunning receptionist, and none of the academic journals in his reception room took his fancy. He had to restrain himself from pacing up and down like an expectant father. In Jackson’s office, he could hear the drone of light conversation, punctuated by cheerful laughs. Brian imagined the V-C exchanging quips and brandies with some venerable professor as they worked out seating plans for a testimonial dinner, or decided on the cover design of the new University prospectus.

‘Any idea how long?’ he asked.

Gabrielle looked up from her blood-red nails, and tapped her file against heart-shaped lips.

‘It could be a while. He dithers a lot, you know.’

‘I know.’

Gabrielle went back to her talons. She was giving them an edge.

‘I saw a rabbit on campus this morning,’ she said.

‘Oh really?’

‘Yes. It must be summer at last.’

He did not care about rabbits. Rabbits in the Chem Building. Rabbits in Jason’s room.

Rabbits!

He should have guessed. No wonder Jason’s bunny looked so messed up. He had resisted Jason’s demands that the thing be buried, and put it in a twist-tie rubbish bag. It was out for the refuse people to pick up, in one of the neat row of bins outside the neat row of faculty cottages at the far edge of the campus.

It probably was not important, but when he got through with Jackson he ought to cut class and take Jason to the Infirmary and get his bite looked at. There was a slim chance of infection.

Jackson’s door opened, and the V-C showed Professor Prawer out with much hand-shaking and joviality.

‘Hello, Brian,’ he said, ‘sorry to keep you on hold. We’ve got a graduation ceremony to stage-manage. Prawer’s trying to convince me to lay on a laser hologram spectacle.’

Prawer left laughing, and Brian wondered where to start with the bad news.

‘Could you wait just a teensy minute-ette more, Brian. Gaby, any word from the police about the unpleasantness in Chem?’

Gabrielle shook her head.

‘That’s what I want to talk to you about, Ernest. Sparks…’

‘I appreciate your concern, Brian. It’s a bad thing. I hope it doesn’t get blown up by the press. The police think it was some student desperately trying to get drugs…’

‘I think I have some infor–’

‘Terrible business, drugs. I’d thought we’d got that problem under control since last year. The counselling service is supposed to be first-rate.’