All or Nothing (27 page)

It was now or never.

“This makes things easier,” their enemy continued. “The problem is, The Game was over a long time ago. You said it yourself, there is no Control anymore. Rules are out of the window. Which means I’m driven by revenge. Kappa, I’m glad that you came to your senses—”

The pair of them stopped walking. Iain was sweating profusely. Kathryn gauged the relative positions of the two men. Sputnik was closer. She would have to get him first. Genghis started to tense. His muscles rippled. Kathryn sensed the tense atmosphere in the humid air.

Iain addressed Sputnik: “This is the best decision for all of us. In my game, all of those years ago, I chose you because I respected your integrity.” Iain could only hope that Sputnik believed his lies.

When Sputnik smiled, he knew he had been wrong.

Horribly wrong
.

Sputnik threw a hand into the air. “Problem is this. Revenge to me is everything. Which means my word doesn’t mean shit at this very moment. This bitch may have killed my Boyd, but you were with her at the time. And you suggested joining my team, which means you would be replacing him. And no one replaces my retard brother. She may have killed him, but I didn’t see or hear you stopping her. Which makes you just as guilty as she is.”

Iain smiled. “Is that right?”

Sputnik licked his lips. “You bet your fucking life it is.”

The other man’s mouth set into a grim hard line. “Sputnik?”

“Yes, Kappa?”

“See these handcuffs?” Iain held up a pair of handcuffs. He dangled them in the air. “I only have the one set. Which means. . .”

Silence engulfed the rooftop.

Then Sputnik and Genghis both raised their weapons.

Kathryn reached for her gun, but it wasn’t there. She flapped about for a second as she turned around. Then she realised Iain had the gun in his hand, aiming at Sputnik - Iain fired first and, for a second, the muzzle flash blinded her, forcing her to close her eyes. As she opened them, she saw Sputnik’s head explode in a mass of brain and blood. The top of his skull disappeared, his eyeball fell out of his skull and the body collapsed backwards. He didn’t have the chance to fire his gun. She switched her gaze to Genghis.

And then she was falling, pushed from behind. She fell towards Sputnik’s fallen body as Iain pushed her away from him. As she fell, she noticed Genghis raise his shotgun. A flash exploded from the barrel. Genghis’s body was not knocked back by the blast, and she saw the recoil ripple through his muscles. As if it was in slow motion, she saw what happened to Iain. The blast ripped into his torso, and blood was erupting from his waist and arm. Iain squeezed off a round, which hit Genghis in the leg. Genghis didn’t move at first, then, realising that he’d been shot, he fell back. Iain had collapsed already.

Kathryn rolled on the ground until she stopped beside Sputnik’s machine gun. She picked it up, lay facing forward and aimed. Genghis was disorientated, still coming to terms with his injured leg. Kathryn lined up the gun’s sights with his chest. She squeezed the trigger, holding it there as it sprayed a volley of rounds into her target.

The big man’s body rocked with the shots, blood sprayed everywhere, and dripped from his mouth. He staggered for what seemed like an eternity. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. Then he toppled backwards. As he fell, Kathryn stood up and walked over, machine gun in hand. Genghis was choking on his own blood. His body was a tapestry of black bodily fluids and dark crimson. Blood was oozing wetly from his body, ravaged by bullet holes, a couple looked as if they might have penetrated his heart. Kathryn kicked the shotgun away from his side, watching as his breaths become shallower.

She turned and ran back to Iain, who had pulled himself up against the low wall at the edge of the roof in a seated position. A small pool of blood was forming below his body. Kathryn dropped to her knees. “How bad is it?” she asked.

Iain grimaced. His face was deathly pale. “It’s okay, I just got grazed. The real damage is to my forearm.”

Kathryn lifted Iain’s shirt. Shotgun pellets had embedded themselves into the skin of his torso, and blood was oozing from the surface; however, the injuries did not look too deep. The real damage was, as Iain had said, to his arm. A flap of skin hung from below his elbow. The bone was showing, dyed pink from the blood. Since blood wasn’t pulsing out under pressure, presumably no arteries had been hit or damaged. Despite this, they both knew that Iain was likely to go into shock at any moment.

She stood up and ran behind the generator. Grabbing her rucksack, she raced back to Iain’s side. Riffling through the bag’s contents, she eventually found the first aid kit. Opening the box, she found some painkillers and a syringe. Iain looked down at her, eyes wide in surprise. “That can’t be a standard first aid with pills—”

“—It is,” she replied reassuringly. “Those are the pills I found in a locker. What I wouldn’t do for some morphine right now. The syringe is useless.” She unwrapped a bandage and prepared it for use. She took the last two bottles of water from her rucksack.  She popped a couple of pills into Iain’s hand. “Take them, drink this.”

Iain followed his orders. He swigged the bottle long and hard. When he took it away from his mouth, only half was left. Kathryn looked at the wound. “This may sting a little.”

Kathryn poured the water onto Iain’s arm, washing some of the excess blood away. Iain clenched his teeth and didn’t make a noise, but his hand gripped the wall beside him. Kathryn could see the tendons poking through his skin as he flexed the muscles. Once the wound was washed, she took a shirt from the bag and wiped it dry, even though blood was still oozing. She pressed the flap of skin into place and wound the bandage tightly around Iain’s arm. The bandage instantly absorbed the blood, but she continued to wrap the gauze around it several times until it was firm and rigid. Despite it being a temporary fix, it would have to do for the time being. “Right,” she said. “That should hold for now. How you feeling?”

He clenched his teeth against the pain. “Like some big black guy just shot me.”

“Well it’s not a perfect job, but it should last until we get off this roof. The pills should reduce the pain for a while. It could be worse, we could have died.”

Iain nodded, silent. He stood up, feeling a quake in his legs. “Right, let’s get out of here.”

Kathryn stood up too and examined the contents of the rucksack, the items now spread over the rooftop’s surface. She walked over to Genghis and bent down to look at him, relieved that he’d finally bled to death. His eyes were half open, staring into the sky. Kathryn checked his body. Clipped around his waist, over his thong, was a gun belt. It held shotgun shells and a knife. Kathryn unclipped it. She placed it around her own waist and then bent down to pick up the shotgun from the ground. She returned to Iain, finding that he was holding their pistol in his good hand. Kathryn gave him a smile of encouragement, saying, “Let’s go.”

Iain hobbled along beside Kathryn, nursing his injured arm. “What about your bag?”

“It’s just a hindrance now, it doesn’t have anything useful left in it. Besides, I have a shotgun. Any fucker gets in my way and they lose a limb, a head or a torso. We’ll soon get out of here, Iain. Mark my words.”

The couple stepped past the generator. The roof continued for another few feet. A small metal walkway, complete with handrail, looked as if it led across to the adjacent roof. In turn, that roof then stretched for quite a way, and ended at another similar walkway, and it seemed to have similar looking generators to the ones on the roof where they were standing. When they reached the first walkway she stopped, letting Iain go first. He stepped gingerly onto the metal grating and hopped off at the other side. Kathryn followed, keeping pace with Iain as they crossed the second rooftop.  “So what are you going to do when we get out of here?” she asked him.

Iain didn’t respond at once, he just looked at her and turned away. “I don’t know if I can get out of this situation. You see, I came here with a purpose. I wanted to make The Company suffer. And did they? No. I killed a few of their goons, but they will just replace them with others. This was a fruitless exercise. There’s nothing for me outside in the real world and nothing for me here. So I might as well stay.”

Kathryn bit her lip as they walked a few more steps in silence. “Well,” she said quietly, “if I’m not being too pushy, I would like to buy you a coffee sometime. It’s the least I can do for the man who saved my life on - well, throughout a whole evening really. Just coffee, nothing else, I don’t want to encroach on Jeanette’s place in your life or anything. I’m not a home wrecker.”

Iain stopped walking. He looked at Kathryn and smiled. “I would love that.”

Kathryn returned his smile as they continued walking. “Good. So just coffee, okay?”

“Sure.”

They were halfway across the roof now. The neon lights of the theatre seemed to get bigger as they approached. They were close to their destination. They passed several more generators, which Kathryn could hear making a whirring noise, creating a general hum all around.

“Kathryn,” Iain asked, “what are you going to do when you get out of here? Apart from buying a coffee for a sad old git?”

“Well, apart from having coffee with the person who saved my life, I always wanted to go to France. It's been my dream, and I’ve been saving for many years to do so. After this experience,” Kathryn paused to look around as she remembered the chaos of the last few hours, “I think I’ll quit my job. I couldn’t go back to my office after this. Yes, I think I will just pack up and go.”

“I have a house in Paris, if you need somewhere to stay.”

Kathryn laughed disbelievingly. “Yeah, right.”

Iain said nothing and he wasn’t smiling as he waited for Kathryn to stop laughing.

“Really, are you serious?” she asked. “No, I couldn’t do that, you don’t even know me, that’s too generous, you’re pulling my leg, right?”

“I wasn’t the only one who saved a life today. Think of it as a gift. Stay as long as you want.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? A house in—”

Something heavy slammed into Kathryn’s head. The impact sent her reeling into the low parapet wall at the edge of the roof, and her head collided with the brickwork. Stunned, she tried to make sense of what had just happened. In front of her, Iain was struggling with a man. They were tangled in a knot of arms and elbows. Iain threw a punch and missed, the man kneed him in the ribs, knocking him senseless and off balance, so that Iain fell to the floor.  Kathryn’s eyes took in all of it. The man who was standing above Iain wore a spiked metal mask and a red bandana. His left arm was heavily bandaged, blood soaking through the white material, dripping to the floor. His arms were tattooed and he looked scrawny and undernourished.

The driver!

The fourth man!

The one who had nearly killed her in the lift, when his arm reached through the closing doors and grabbed her by the hair.

Where on earth had he come from!

The man seemed to be laughing beneath his mask. The sound was hollow, manic, reverberating off the metal mask itself.

“Do you fuckers seriously think you got away with this?” he asked. “After shooting
me
in the arm, I don’t fuckin’ think so!”

The newcomer grabbed Iain by the arm, digging his fingers into the wound. A sickening squelch of muscle and fluid filled the night air. Blood immediately oozed from the gap in the bandaging as poor Iain yelled in agony, unable to react, pain wracking and paralysing his body. The enemy manhandled Iain to the edge of the roof, then kicked him in the chest and punched him with his good arm. Iain remained standing, unsteady on his feet.

“I should kill you,” the guy went on, “but that would be too quick. No, I'm going to make you suffer.” He pulled out a knife. The neon lights from the nearby theatre shone off its blade, creating pink flares.

Kathryn took control of herself, looking around for the shotgun. She found it was at her side, about a foot away, and scrabbled her fingers along the floor to get it, the sound drawing the attention of the fourth man.

He turned towards her. “Where do you think you’re going, bitch?” He stepped over to Kathryn and placed a foot on her hand, pressing down. Kathryn grunted in pain. Her tormentor smiled. “I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Kinzy."

Kinzy looked into the sky. "Viewers of The Game, you may remember me from highlights such as ‘pulling Kathryn's fucking hair out in a lift’ or, more recently, ‘slamming a shotgun into her skull’. All recommended viewing.” He kicked Kathryn in the ribs, causing her to curl up like a foetus on the dusty floor, the breath driven out of her. “Don’t go anywhere, will you? HAHAHA.”

Kinzy turned and went back to Iain, who was doubled over in pain. “Get the fuck up, you shit!” Kinzy yanked Iain up by the hair and kicked him in the stomach. Iain retched in pain. Kinzy dragged Iain over to the edge of the roof’s low parapet wall, forcing him to sit on it. Iain was semi-conscious, so Kinzy slapped his face until his eyes opened.

“Now I am not such a bad guy,” the fourth man said. “You get to choose how I kill you. Will it be by my knife? Or the shotgun? Or my fists? Hell, I could maybe fuck you to death, it’s not like this show is for kids or anything – HAHAHA.” The mask enhanced his maniacal laughter, accentuating its evil tones. “What will it be?”