The Age of Scorpio (66 page)

‘It’s true she was part of a selective breeding and genetic manipulation programme. She and many other children were born to have their genetic material harvested, but we weren’t going to kill them, just take samples while they lived privileged lives.’

‘And where are these children now?’ Beth asked. Du Bois thought about lying. Instead he lit a cigarette and tried to ignore the horrific noises from upstairs.

‘They’re all dead.’ Beth started to say something. ‘No, we didn’t do it. To all intents and purposes they were wiped out in a terrorist attack. That’s why we need your sister.’

Beth wanted to believe him. Her instincts were to trust him, but she didn’t feel she could risk it, not when she was so close.

‘I’m taking my sister and we’re going,’ she told him.

‘Something’s coming. Talia is very important, and you’d both be better off coming with me.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t have to have this discussion, Beth. I can take her any time

I want. You don’t even know how to kill me. Trust me.’

‘Would sawing your head off with a World War One bayonet do it?’ she asked.

It might
, du Bois thought. ‘I don’t think you’ve got that in you.’

‘You get between me and Talia, we’ll find out,’ she told him evenly.

Du Bois looked at her through the pall of his cigarette smoke. He took another drag. He made his decision. Beth just would not stop going after her sister. She had more will and courage than the entire ruling council of the Circle put together.

‘Fine, but they’ll send others like me after you,’ he told her.
To hell with the Circle.
‘And I’m taking some samples from her before we go our separate ways.’ Beth opened her mouth to object. ‘I’m probably going to get killed for this, so no more arguments.’ He stood up and downloaded the route to where McGurk had said Talia was directly into his mind. It was very close. Du Bois supposed McGurk had wanted to keep her nearby. ‘And give me my gun back. It really was a present.’

‘No.’

Du Bois was not sure why he was surprised it was a lock-up. His ability to quote Wilde notwithstanding, McGurk had been a small-minded man. Du Bois let Beth handle the man guarding her sister. He heard bones crack under her fist. He was a little worried that she’d hit him so hard she’d killed him.

Talia was lying on a hospital trolley being fed with a drip and apparently giving blood. She was no longer a pale waif-like beauty; she looked gaunt and near-dead.

Beth rushed to the side of the trolley.

‘Talia!’ Her sister was unconscious.

Du Bois immediately began checking her vitals. She was okay but suffering from constant sedation and enforced bed rest. Her breathing was a little shallow and she was probably malnourished, but her pulse was fine.

‘What are they doing to her?’ Beth demanded, more distraught than he’d heard her so far.

‘At a guess, they’re using her blood as some kind of hallucinogenic narcotic.’ Beth looked at him like he was mad. He left out that he thought her blood coming into contact with some kind of sensitive mind was probably the reason Talia’s house had been destroyed and all those people had died in the nightclub.

He produced a leather case from his jacket and removed a number of vials from it. He placed a few against her skin and two in her mouth.

‘What are you doing?’ Beth demanded, reaching for the gun as the vials grew needles and started drawing blood. The ones in her mouth took scrapings. Talia was starting to stir. ‘Don’t you think she’s lost enough blood?’

‘This is our agreement,’ du Bois said in a tone that did not invite argument. ‘I’ll be out of your life soon.’

Beth looked like she was going to object again as he rolled Talia onto her side. She moaned and then cried out in pain as du Bois pressed one of the vials into the base of her spine.

‘She’s going to need medical help,’ du Bois told her.
Which is probably where the next person the Circle send will find you
, he left unsaid. ‘I can drop you where you choose. Then you’ll never see me again.’
Because I’ll be dead
, he thought as he took the final vial away and let Talia drop down onto her back.

‘Beth?’ Talia said woozily. Beth looked at her, tears springing into her eyes. Du Bois wished that they had more of a future, but he wasn’t sure that any of them did. ‘I’ve been having really bad dreams, Beth.’

Beth looked at du Bois, who moved to pick Talia up. Beth grabbed him by the arm to stop him. She wrapped the sheets around Talia and then lifted her light form off the trolley herself. Du Bois unhooked her from the drip.

Beth carried Talia, who was fading in and out of consciousness, as du Bois led the way across Broad Street past the break-dancing crew. As they passed the dancers, the music changed to that of some pop song that du Bois vaguely remembered from the 80s. As it did, he heard the sound of many people stamping their feet on the ground in unison. It was a sound that wouldn’t have been out of place on a parade ground. Du Bois and Beth both glanced behind them. They were surprised to see all the tourists standing to attention in neat rows and staring at them. Then, in time with the music, old and young alike started dancing towards them, clicking their fingers. The break-dancers in the clown masks were nowhere to be seen.

‘Run!’ du Bois shouted. Both .38s slid out of his sleeves, though he knew they would not be sufficient.

‘What? They’re just dancing,’ Beth said, more bemused than anything, and was then appalled when du Bois started firing both pistols as he backed off.

‘They’ve been slaved!’ du Bois shouted. Beth looked confused. Du Bois struggled to find something to say that would make her understand. ‘They’re zombies!’ he shouted as the crowd broke into a run at them. Beth finally seemed to get it and ran for the Range Rover.

‘Welcome to the douchepocalypse, motherfuckers!’ one of the clowns shouted from behind the van, and started firing. The sound of the automatic weapon was monstrously loud in the street, echoing back from the walls and across the water. Du Bois had a moment to wonder at someone using such a big-bore round in an automatic weapon when a shot caught him in the shoulder. His armoured coat hardened, his skin hardened, but the force of the .50 Beowulf bullet spun him round and he hit the ground, his shoulder almost certainly broken. The closest of the slaved tourists was reaching for him. Du Bois put the final two rounds from the right hand .38 into the slave’s legs. The man went sprawling across the ground.

Beth reached the Range Rover. Its lights were blinking to suggest that the doors had been unlocked. It took her a moment to connect the sparks flying off the vehicle’s armoured body with the thunderous roar of gunfire. With that came the realisation that she was being shot at. Even then it seemed unreal, something so far removed from her experience as not to be taken seriously. Beyond the four-by-four she saw passers-by scattering, running towards the closest cover or even freezing.

Hindered by Talia, Beth nevertheless managed to yank open one of the back doors. A burst of fire caught the door, which slammed shut. She felt something hot fly past her ear and instinctively she cowered away, but then she grabbed the door, pulling it open again.

From his position on the ground, du Bois found himself surrounded. Slaved tourists reached down for him. He kicked out and scrabbled backwards as his shoulder healed painfully.

‘Cover! Cover! Beth, shoot them!’ They were snagging his clothes now, clawing at his exposed skin. It wouldn’t be difficult for them, en masse, to hold him down, augmented or not.

Beth heard du Bois as she threw Talia onto the Range Rover’s back seat. More firing. The car was haloed by sparks, some of its bullet-resistant glass starting to crack under multiple impacts from heavy-calibre fire.

She looked back to see him surrounded by ‘zombies’. Beth grabbed du Bois’s .45 from her jacket pocket, leaned across the bonnet of the Range Rover like she’d seen in films and tried to pull the trigger. Nothing happened.

Lots more gunfire now, more than one shooter, perhaps as many as three or four. The slaved tourists were dying silently and uncomplaining, hydrostatic shock from heavy weapons blowing limbs off. They were shooting at him through the slaves.

He kicked out at the knee of one of the tourists, grabbed his tanto and hamstrung another before managing to get to his feet and break free of them.

As he sprinted for the Range Rover he saw Beth struggling with the .45.

‘The safety! The bloody safety!’ he all but screamed. Then he tried something. He sent her the knowledge of firearms imprinted on his neural nanonics. He had no idea if it would work.

Beth had no idea what was happening. There was a strange feeling in her head like creeping warmth – it lasted a moment – then a shooting pain so intense that she collapsed to the ground behind the Range Rover. She could feel blood trickling from her eyes, nose and ears, but suddenly she knew how to use the cold piece of metal in her hand.

From the ground she saw one of the clown-masked gunmen sprint from behind the van, heading for cover behind a car on the same side of the street as the Range Rover. Beth took aim.

It’s fucking amazing
, King Jeremy thought. The problem with shooting people for real was that it was never as spectacular as it was in the movies or games: there was never as much blood. So the four of them had overlaid VR graphics filters on their real vision. Everything happening in the real world they could see, but the filters added much more splatter and made it look as if they were living out their favourite first-person shooter. Him and Baron Albedo unloading at that guy the zombies were trying to bring down had looked awesome. The zombies had all but exploded in front of their eyes. You could even change the environment. He knew that Dracimus had placed himself in some environment where he was a supervillain mowing down superheroes, and he was pretty sure that Inflictor had simulated some sort of hell environment.

Albedo’s dancing-zombies idea had been inspired as well. He would, however, have to talk to Dracimus about shouting ‘Welcome to the douchepocalypse’. Major uncoolness.

King Jeremy aimed the AR-15 – converted to fire the massive .50 Beowulf rounds on full automatic – at the blond guy sprinting for the Range Rover. As he did so, Inflictor made a run for the opposite side of the street.

Du Bois threw himself across the front of the Range Rover as Beth fired the .45 repeatedly from her position on the ground. The running gunman dived behind the car he was making for, though she was sure she had hit him.

Du Bois rolled into a crouch, ignoring the painful jarring in his still-healing shoulder. He snatched the pouch clipped to his belt which contained four magazines for the .45 and slid it along the ground to Beth. He didn’t give her the nanite-tipped bullets.

He spun, keeping low as the Range Rover rocked from hit after hit. He saw some of the slaved tourists running towards the back of the car. The .38 on his right arm slid out on its hopper at a thought. He flipped the cylinder open and emptied the spent cartridges, then, grabbing a speed loader from his pocket, slid the new rounds home and flipped the cylinder shut.

On the opposite side of the road he saw one of the masked gunmen running towards cover behind a car. Du Bois made for the rear of the Range Rover. As he did, a fat tourist in a loud shirt came around the back of the vehicle. Du Bois shot him three times in the face at near point-blank range. Each round was a glaser, a hollow-point bullet filled with number-12 shotgun pellets. The pellets spread out inside the victim after impact. Du Bois strode around the back of the Range Rover, where another one of the slaved tourists charged him. He fired the suppressed revolver another three times and then with a thought the hopper slid the still-hot .38 back up into his sleeve.

Du Bois yanked the rear door of the Range Rover open, catching another one of the slaved tourists under the chin. Yet another appeared. Du Bois pulled the tanto and cut him across the throat, bringing up his leg to front-kick him for good measure. It gave him a moment. He hit the quick release on the storage compartment in the floor of the Range Rover. The top slid back and he had time to grab the SA58 FAL carbine before four hands grabbed him from behind and wrenched him out of the car. He kicked back, sending all three of them to the ground. Over the road he saw the clown rise from behind the car and bring the massive barrel of the modified AR-15 to bear.

Beth scuttled back, keeping low as round after round sparked off the armoured Range Rover. The gunman she was sure she had hit appeared over the roof of the car he’d dived behind and fired. Beth opened the front passenger door of the Range Rover and took cover behind it. More rounds sparked off it, battering the door into her. She fired three quick shots through the gap between the open door and the body of the vehicle. Instinctively she seemed to know just where to place the shots. She expected the guy to take cover. Instead she saw bits fly off his hood as he staggered back, and rather than falling over he just took aim again and fired.

‘Beth!’ du Bois shouted from the back of the Range Rover.

With his left he battered at the slaved tourists clawing at him, with his right he loosed a long burst from the FAL carbine at the clown on the opposite side of the road. He walked the rounds down the body of the car, the armour-piercing tips punching through the vehicle’s body. There was a spray of blood, and the gunman jumped back from the car. He then disappeared behind it.

Du Bois cried out as teeth bit into his ear. His skin hardened and the teeth broke, but not before drawing blood. Beth appeared over him, pointing his own .45 at him. She fired once, shifted the pistol and fired again, executing the two zombies attacking du Bois.

‘Get the shotgun,’ du Bois told her as he rolled to his feet. Using the back of the Range Rover as cover, he fired short bursts at the van, trying to suppress the clowns still using the van as cover. He was disappointed to see that the van seemed to be armoured as well. He was more pleased when a stray round killed the sound system.

Shoving the .45 in her waistband, Beth grabbed the shotgun. Somehow she knew it was a Benelli M4 semi-automatic. She grabbed a bandolier of cartridges and slung them over her shoulder. Behind her, du Bois had retreated behind the Range Rover’s rear door as he changed magazines. Another slaved tourist rushed in. Beth fired under the door, taking the zombie’s legs out from under her. The zombie’s head bounced off the door before she hit the ground.