Necropolis Rising (3 page)

More often than not, the authors were fresh out of University, a first degree now an apparent badge of office for some; recognition of their intellectualism. Sometimes the proposals came from seasoned academics or professional rivals, and behind the battlements of anonymity Mitchell loved to scupper any potential publication; not because it was not viable, but because he could.

And his opinion was valued by the major academic publishing houses. A poor review meant no deal; no credibility.

Over the years this had certainly proven to be a beneficial position. Especially for young, female PhD students eager for publication and willing to do anything for a chance to have their work recognized. Such prestige led to major research grants and scientific accolades. One night at the mercy of Professor Mitchell was but a small price to pay.

Because: the cost of refusing his advances was professional suicide.

Academia had given him a good life; a six figure salary in Birmingham University’s Faculty of Health, and young women by the semester load. It didn’t bother him that they did what he asked under duress, or for personal gain. As long as he had them, as long as he had control over them, then this was all that mattered.

Mitchell rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn with a cupped palm. Late nights were par for the course these days. What with work and ill-gotten sex it was small wonder his marriage had survived the ten years that it had. Marcia had left him for someone in agriculture; a Scotsman who reeked of manure. No accounting for taste, he’d mused at the time. It had been so long ago he had neither the inclination nor the motivation to recall the details of it. He hadn’t cared then and he certainly didn’t care now. Marcia was a dim memory who wrenched him away from his ordered life as a University Professor. And the women who he lured into bed with promises of rapid career progression gave him impetus. For a while, he had hidden behind this emotional façade; incapable of giving affection. But this had recently and incomprehensibly changed.

Because, at fifty nine years of age, George Mitchell had fallen in love.

Mitchell was in love with Amy Childs and this was a pure and simple fact. But it was a love that was totally unrequited since Amy Childs didn’t know of his affections. She had been his secretary for little over three years and in this time he yearned to have her; not in the way he sought intellectual and physical dominance over his students, he just enjoyed her purity, her simplicity. She held no stock by intellect, she merely enjoyed - accepted - her place in things.

At 25 she was thirty nine years his junior but her presence - her vitality - made him feel young again. And when he considered her beauty, the way her dark hair fell upon her pale and delicate skin, or how the light danced in her ice blue eyes, he didn’t conjure cold, calculated images of sex for the sake of base gratification and degradation, instead he thought of tenderness and a yearning for his devotion to be a reciprocal entity; beheld and reflected in the eyes of this beautiful, delicate creature.

It was the only thing that terrified him, the thought of Amy rejecting his advances. And such was his fear of losing her, he was content to be near to her, drawing comfort from the smell of her perfume (Flora by Gucci, he’d bought a bottle and kept it at home, a reminder when she wasn’t near) and the sight of her slight frame as she sat opposite making notes, snatching glimpses of the rise and fall of her small breasts, longing to reach out and touch her.

There was a noise just outside the door of his office. A small noise, a little like nails scratching against the wood.

“
Amy?” he called out, relishing the sound of her name on his lips. “Amy, are you still here?”

The scratching noise stopped
.

Must be imagining things, he thought, with mild disappointment. He recalled Amy asking him if she could leave early; something about not feeling too good. He remembered wishing that he had the courage to reach out and stroke her pale cheek, and take away her hurt.

Mitchell turned his attention back to his review. It was overdue. The authors didn’t deserve his punctuality, only his contempt.

The handle on his office door turned until the mechanism clicked. He looked up as the door swung inwards and his heart began to thud in his chest.

Amy Childs was standing in the doorway, her exquisite, unblemished face alabaster in the stark office lights. Her hair was damp, as though she’d been outside in the rain and two buttons on the plum coloured blouse, accentuating her slim hard body, were open from the waist up, revealing the perfect “O” of her navel.

“
Oh, gosh, my dear,” Mitchell said softly, pushing his chair away from the desk. “You feel it too?”

He edged towards her. “Look at you,” he whispered. The poor creature had a confused expression on her face; her pale eyes staring, and when they locked onto him he saw something inside them, a deep seated hunger that so desperately needed to be sated.

Quivering, Mitchell stood in front of her - over her - and brought his hands up to frame her chin, her skin was as ice, surprising but not deterring him from the moment where he made a thousand images and wishes come true, stooping to place his lips and stroke them against hers. He felt her mouth open, drew his tongue across teeth whiter than her skin and plunged it deeply into her mouth.

Amy Childs removed his tongue with a bite that was as efficient as a bear trap.

Mitchell reeled, the pain bright, but numbing his senses as he staggered backwards, his chest a bloody “V” where gore streaked from his mouth.

His feet tangled and he fell, his head making contact with the desk, putting the lights out for a while. And when he came to, mere moments later, dazed and confused and unable to move; he found Amy Childs straddling him, her skirt hitched, her blouse open and bloody in a mocking parody of coitus. He tried to scream but it was ineffective, he found himself choking on the gush of blood running down his throat, its iron taste gagging and making his belly burn. But by this time Amy was bringing her white face, splashed with dark blood into view. The hunger in her eyes was still there and shortly before she clamped her mouth over his lips began chewing, Professor George Mitchell dismissed his intellect and went mad.

Not that Amy would have noticed. She was too busy eating.

***

4

“
So what now?”

It was Stu Kunaka who asked the question, but they had all thought it. This was a job that was dependent on precision timing. This current problem was about as welcome as holes in a life raft.

“
I need an appraisal and recommendations,” O’Connell said. “And fast.”

“
We can still plant the virus if we can gain access to the NCIDD building,” Clarke offered.

“
Our man who can isn’t in the building until 8am tomorrow morning,” Suzie said curtly. “And now the city is locked down he
isn’t
getting in there.”

“
Are we saying this thing is off?” Amir asked.

“
It
can’t
be off,” O’Connell said coolly. “There’s no such thing as extenuating circumstances with The Consortium. There’s only the job - and getting it done.”

“
But no one is getting in,” Amir protested. “The place is crawling with the military.”

O’Connell nodded; his face impassive, calculating.

“
Stu?” he finally said.

“
Already on it, boss,” the big man said reaching for his phone and walking away from them with the tiny handset rammed to his ear.

“
What are you thinking, O’Connell?” Suzie said with a puzzled frown.

“
The military has freedom of movement. Which now means getting into the city may be the toughest part of this operation,” he explained.

“
How are
we
getting inside the city?” Clarke asked picking at a crop of ripe spota on his chin.

“
Stu’s working on it,” O’Connell said; his demeanor upbeat, all traces of uncertainty shelved. He was doing what he did best. He was
planning
, he was thinking - building a way to dodge the curveball and turn it to their advantage. Sure, what he had in mind wasn’t perfect. But he knew if they could get past the cordon it would definitely work.

“
You want to enlighten me?” Suzie’s face suggested a degree of irritation. Her smooth forehead was now furrowed and her mouth adopted a pout that had O’Connell yearning for a moment alone with her, a moment of intimacy where he could hold her to him and stroke the nape of her neck in the way that made her giggle and sigh in one hit.

But Suzie would never show her feelings for him here. Here there was only the job and getting it done. Her professionalism was one of the many things he loved about her.

She shouldn’t have turned out so organized. As a woman Suzie should’ve turned out a mess. When O’Connell had first met her she was high on coke and threatening to throw herself from a multi-storey car park. He’d watched, fascinated as her magnificent body teetered on the parapet as she yelled curses at the twinkling, smog-hazed lights of the city skyline.

Much of it was aimed at Toby Hanks, her father, a man who enjoyed too many evenings reading his little girl bedtime stories about monsters before clamping a hand over her mouth and proving that the real monsters are sometimes the very people in which we place so much trust. Suzie’s mother often lay in a stupor downstairs in their lounge as Toby Hanks lay in bed with his “little girl”, telling her never to talk about their “little secret”.

O’Connell had found all this out on that night; watching her on the multi-storey, a symbol of beauty and rage and self destruction. And on that night he made a promise that had stopped her from jumping. That night he promised this beautiful, coked-out-of-her-brain woman that he would make things right.

At the time she’d laughed. But what he promised to do, in exchange for her climbing down and talking to him for a few more minutes, was that he would find Toby Hanks and bring him to her and make him beg for forgiveness.

And then, O’Connell assured her with unerring conviction, he’d put a gun to her abusive father’s head and put a bullet in his brain.

At first Suzie thought he was joking, and then she saw his deep brown eyes: unwavering, honest and mesmerizing. If anyone ever asked her when she’d fallen in love with Kevin O’Connell she would’ve said it was the moment she saw those eyes; and the truth living within them.

“
Hey,” Suzie’s voice slapped him from his reverie. “Stay focused, O’Connell.”

“
I am focused, Susan!” He tipped her a wink, knowing how much she hated being called her Christian name. “Stu, tell me we’re on.”

The big man clicked off his phone and walked back to the group.

“
You bet your fuckin’ Porsche, we’re on!” he laughed.

***

The same room – a different plan. It was two hours later and the crew were standing is a semi-circle checking each other over.

Their clothes had been replaced by green military fatigues; O’Connell adjusting the packs on the webbing lashed about his shoulders and waist.

“
Are you sure this is going to work?” Clarke said doubtfully as he rolled the cuffs of his tunic up several times before he could find his arms.

“
Don’t fret, Clarkey,” Stu jibed. “You might grow into it.”

“
We ain’t all fat fucks like you, Stu,” Clarke grumbled.

“
Knock it off,” said O’Connell sternly. “I’m going to run the brief, and I want you to listen up. This is a new plan and it has holes. I don’t want any of us falling through 'em, got that?”

The silence told O’Connell that they’d all gotten it pretty good.

“
We’re using the uniforms to move around. Stu has called in some pretty big favours tonight and got us enough kit to walk the walk. Downstairs we’ve got us some serious transport to make the going a little easier.”

“
What you got us, Stu, a tank?” Clarke scoffed.

“
I didn’t have enough time,” Stu said with the kind of seriousness that came with honesty. “So we’ve got a
Mastiff
six wheel drive; carries six, fully armored.”

“
Isn’t that a little like overkill? We’re supposed to blend in, not go on a ram-raid.” Suzie said pointedly to Kunaka, earning her a scowl from the big man.

“
We’ve got to prepare for every eventuality, Suzie,” O’Connell interjected. “If we get rumbled, we may have to force our way through.”

“
And a roadblock ain’t gonna stop no Mastiff, missy,” Stu growled.

“
Armour as thick as your head, then, I guess,” Suzie sniped, turning away from him.

“
Let’s stay focused,” O’Connell said tactfully. “The plan is this: we get into the city, appraise the easiest route to our target, then use the explosion as leverage to gain access to the NICDD building. We’re a squad sent to protect and lock down a potentially exposed, strategic target. From there we plug into their mainframe and Clarke will deliver our package directly into the system. Then we get the fuck out of there the way we got in. I’ll try and plug gaps as I go; so stow your questions because I haven’t got all the answers for you right now.”

“
What’s the time frame?” Clarke asked.