Spiral (26 page)

‘Carter: I want a guarantee. I want that cunt dead.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Durell.

Night had fallen over the desert.

Outside, the temperature had plummeted and the sky was perfectly clear, stars twinkling like jewels cascading across the finest of black skin. Feuchter still sat in his chair, now in darkness, only the glow of a cigar in his hand evidence that he remained in the deep underground office, awake, alert, dark eyes glittering. He scratched at the scar on his belly self-consciously.

He stared at images of the black desert on a monitor. Nothing stirred; there were no lights, no movement, no intrusions. This place was an emptiness; this place was a void. Spiral_Q was invisible; a non-place; a desert within a desert.

Feuchter smiled softly to himself.

Around him, in the silence, he could almost feel the hive of activity. Thousands of workers: programmers, hardware designers, hackers, the world’s finest computing minds working together like a well-oiled machine on the finest of computational designs ever created -

The OIII Proto. The first-ever cubic processor.

The first-ever
cellular
processor.

The prototype of an electronic
mind.

A
brain.

And combined with WorldCode, it could predict actions, reactions, military instructions: it could almost
predict the future.
It would be the perfect weapon. It would make him, and Durell, and the
others
... it would make them rich, it would make them powerful but - more importantly...

It would make them God.

Feuchter sighed, blowing a cloud of silver smoke into the darkness. There came a tiny
click
from the lift and a small pool of light invaded the black. A figure stepped free, the door closed behind it and soft footsteps approached.

He gazed up at the Nex, naked now, body perfectly toned, perfectly formed; muscular and taut. Feuchter licked his lips and met the copper-eyed gaze of the Nex. This was a female - a scout, smaller than the warrior caste, less deadly but much more athletic, much better at feats of endurance and stamina. A slim, tough little fucker.

Feuchter’s gaze travelled down, and then back up again across the perfectly formed thighs, hips, stomach, chest -and to the face. The pale-skinned face with its burning copper eyes.

The face was beautiful.

Cold and beautiful.

And only a little deformed.

Feuchter smiled, a strange twisted smile.

‘Come here,’ he said, spreading his arms as he felt desire and lust smash through his body. And the Nex stepped forward, opened her legs and silently obeyed.

C
arter knew it was a dream, and yet that somehow made it worse. In waking life he had some element of control; in the dream he was merely a spectator and he already knew the events, knew what happened, knew about the world’s pain and the shocking after-effects of the Grey Death ... and yet, again and again he could relive those moments with curses and anger and hatred -but without control.

He stood, his boots planted firmly on the oil-slippery deck of the tanker, a huge 200,000-tonne vessel that cruised through the dark black waters like an ebony iceberg on its descent from the Arctic. Carter’s eyes were dark, deeply ringed, and his black uniform ruffled in the cold sea-breeze as his gloved hands clasped the Kalashnikov AK582 with its sub-needle clip and 10-round bomb-burst.

The Grey Death.

It left a bad taste in Carter’s brain, like a poisonous dose of cocaine.

A mutated biological weapon, the Grey Death had spread like Godsfire through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and had touched upon Russia. Paris had been wiped clean - ironic. Berlin had suffered a human enema. Rome had been annihilated, bloated corpses filling the streets, the dead outweighing the living by a thousand to one. The Grey Death had rioted through both North and South America without prejudice, and was only finally tamed after slaughtering fifty-eight million people worldwide.

Fifty-eight fucking million.

At first, Carter had not been able to quantify the amount. Ten, fifty, yes - he could visualise that. But fifty-eight million? Just numbers. Stupid numbers. Until he stood on the decks of the tankers - corpse tankers -during the TankerRuns where he and most of Spiral had been posted as Anti-terrorist.

The tankers, some nearly a mile long, had been stripped of most of their deck plates, leaving massive criss-crosses of girders through which the bloated corpses were dumped. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions.

At first Carter had been unable to watch, unable to look upon so many millions dead. The Grey Death, man-made and devastating, had done the job it had been created to do. Only it had done it too well. Too fucking well.

Carter stood on the deck, oil glossing his boots, submachine gun cold. Jam waved, moved towards him, and their bleak gazes met over the staring faces of a million grey stinking bodies.

‘There’s activity,’ said Jam coldly.

On their way to Siberia, there had been several threats from TJF, a Japanese terrorist group linked to murders in the Western world carried out against a blame-filled decadent society. The threat here was that TJF claimed the poison of the Grey Death had been created in the West -and should stay there. They planned to turn back the TankerRuns ... or sink the huge vessels if they refused.

Machine guns roared.

Carter and Jam sprang into action, along with a hundred other Spiral operatives and soldiers from the crumbling special forces of a crumbling world.

Helicopters roared overhead, and the tanker’s guns picked many flaming from the sky to scream, blazing fire and spitting bullets, into the sea. Japanese TJF soldiers abseiled from the helicopters, machine guns blazing, and Carter and Jam sprinted forward with Kalashnikovs juddering in their grips, faces grim, giving covering arcs of fire for one another as they crouched, bullets ricocheting from the steel girders under their boots.

Carter spun and put a bullet in a Japanese terrorist’s face... but, almost by reflex, the TJF man’s gun was firing, pumping bullets—

One caught Carter high in the chest, clipping his armour and entering under his collarbone. With a gasp he was lifted, punched backwards with a fist of iron and the air flew cold around him as he fell, fell, fell into the tanker hold filled with a million grey corpses...

He landed and felt pus-filled bodies sag beneath him. He screamed as he sank a little. Arms brushed against his ears, his head, his arms and back. He started to struggle, started to sink. He felt flesh part. Reeking fluid surrounding him in a lake of filth. Limbs were all around him now. Their stink, tallow-sprayed from above, intruded past his protective armour and filled Carter’s nostrils, filled his mouth, filled his throat. He gagged, spewing down his armour to mix vomit with his own pooling blood.

The corpses were above him. He was sinking.

He screamed again, struck out.

But the bodies pulled him down.

They burst like old refuse sacks.

Their rancid fluids filled his screaming mouth, ran like battery acid down his gagging throat and he punched out but all he could hear was the roar of laughter from a million bodies intent on revenge for a bio-weapon that had betrayed humanity ...

‘Fuck!’

Night had fallen. Carter awoke, a terrible pain crucifying the centre of his brain. He could smell burning wood and he sat up quickly as the bitter cold horrifying events flooded his mind—

‘Shhh.’

Natasha was there, kneeling by the side of his bed. Her hands were cool and she laid him back down, comfied his pillows, pulled the single sheet up over his naked body. Carter’s eyes focused and he realised that the room was dimly lit by a single candle. The noise of insects spiralled in through wooden shutters, and it amazed Carter to think that below,
below them
was a hive of technological advancement - a Spiral base disguised by a simplistic mask. Distantly, he heard the crackling of a fire and the subdued voices of the armed guards.

Carter rubbed at his head. ‘Any painkillers?’

Natasha handed him tablets and a glass of water. ‘You dreaming about the tankers again?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, that and Kade.’

‘Kade?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ He took the painkillers and washed them down with mineral water.

‘They’ve reset your finger, X-rayed your ribs, checked all the minor cuts and gashes on your body. You’ll live, but the doctor who examined you was unsure why you became so incredibly weak out there under the trees.’

‘Just a headache,’ said Carter lamely.

‘They gave you an intensive scan, your body and brain. They could come up with nothing.’ Natasha smiled softly. ‘The doctor commended your work on me. The stitching, everything that you did. He confirmed what I already knew - that you saved my life.’ Suddenly, Natasha stood and slipped from her T-shirt and shorts. Moonlight glinted on her taut, athletic body; on her flat stomach, high pert breasts, smooth unblemished skin. She climbed into bed beside Carter and lay on her side, pressing herself against his warmth—

Suddenly, Carter’s headache had gone. A new pain invaded him; the pain of fear; the pain of panic; the pain of a dangerous and all-consuming lust...

‘Natasha...’ he whispered.

Her finger touched his lips and stayed there. She leaned forward, her lips brushing against his neck. He groaned, mouth opening, his teeth taking Natasha’s finger and biting gently. Her free hand came up and stroked his hair. He turned, rolling towards her - the feeling of her soft skin, soft breasts, firm shapely legs all pressed against him and he was fired into instant readiness and he allowed himself to press against her as he gazed into her eyes and they were silent for long, long moments. They kissed, nothing more than a touching of tongues. Carter’s hand came up and rested on Natasha’s hip and she groaned, voice husky, scent invading Carter’s mind and consuming his brain; she parted her legs a little, allowing him to press further against her, further into her, further through her and towards the silver paradise beyond—

They kissed harder, with more passion. Carter’s hand ran up her ribs and she giggled, then he traced a spiral down her back and rested his hand on her firm buttocks. She reached down, taking his penis in her hand and squeezing gently, feeling him pulse and harden in her tight strong unforgiving grip—

‘You seem mightily excited, Mr Carter—’

‘Not me, my sweetness.’

‘But you must admit that your body seems rather pleased to see me.’

‘Nah. This is just…’ he licked his lips, eyes glowing mischievously in the gloom ‘... moderate appreciation.’

‘Well,’ Natasha pouted, ‘I would hate to see rampant hard-core lust!’

‘Now I’m sure
that
can be arranged.’

Natasha giggled; Carter kissed her neck, her breasts, her belly, then her lips. Carter’s fist gripped Natasha’s hair and she groaned—

Suddenly he pushed her down to the bed, hard - then allowed his tongue to leave a trail down her breasts, and belly - her legs parted and she moaned as he tasted her cunt. His tongue darted, in and out, a gentle teasing. Her legs came up, encircling his neck as both her hands grasped him, nails digging in as Carter’s teeth nipped at the soft flesh of her vulva, then pushed in, pushed deeper, he kissed her moist lips and tasted her, sucked at her roughly, his tongue probing hard and soft, deep and shallow, teasing and tantalising as her moans filled his ears and she dragged him around into a symbiotic dual-feeding - to take him in her mouth - It was Carter’s turn to groan. He breathed deeply the musky mind-spinning need-inducing scent of her sex. For long moments he was lost to the softness of her lips and tongue, her oral caresses, the promise of danger delivered by her neat teeth. Her hand cupped his testicles, tickled him, squeezed hard the taut muscle of his buttocks and he began to work eagerly on her, his tongue finding her clitoris, toying, probing, his face buried until—

Natasha moved, suddenly, unexpectedly. Carter was flung onto his back, a startled ‘O’ passing his moist shining lips. She grabbed both his hands and pinned them above his head. He gazed up at her - at the perspiration bathing her body, her wide, wild eyes, her sweat-streaked hair. He watched a drop roll down her nose and hang -then drop to her breasts, which swayed in a drunken dance above him.

She lowered her mouth to his, then pulled teasingly away. She lifted her leg, straddled him, hips raised so that the tip of his penis was a hair’s breadth from her. She could feel his eager twitching and, with a smile, lowered herself - a single centimetre - held it - another centimetre - held it longer—

Carter groaned.

She dropped herself onto him with a sudden rush of violence and her hips heaved forward, ramming him deep into her, her breasts brushing against his face, her teeth dropping to bite savagely at his neck - Carter’s back arched. He thrust himself hard up within her, the world a spinning lost dark spiral of blood-red lust and black velvet pleasure and they fucked, fucked hard and slid in one another’s sweat, lips touching caressing biting tearing, hips thrusting and fucking ... Carter was groaning and Natasha was screaming as the explosion came - with Nat’s muscles taut above Carter’s arched and thrumming body - and then they went limp, collapsed against and into one another in a warm sanctuary, and eternity slid into another languid eternity and they lay—