Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) (5 page)

He backed away from the bar, knowing
further discussion would just escalate things.

He got to the table and said, “Charlie, we
got to go.”

She stretched like a cat in the sun, “Why?
I was just starting to have fun and you haven’t finished your pint.”

“We’ve got to go. There are some sphincters
at the bar who have taken a strong dislike to me,” he said softly.

“What, that bald cunt with the ridiculous
moustache and that fat cunt beside him at the bar?” she said loudly and then
laughed. She had a beautiful laugh; whenever he heard it he needed to remind
himself that her beautiful façade hid the soul of a twisted beast.

Stache and Belly looked over with narrowed
eyes and hard jaws.

“We have to go. Now,” he said again softly
but more forcefully.

She stood up unsteadily and put her arm
around him. Although she appeared to be leaning on him she did not actually put
much weight on him. He suspected she was trying to appear to be much drunker
than she actually was.

She continued to speak loudly, “Don’t you
worry, they were only playing. Weren’t you, boys?” She laughed gaily.

She winked at Stache and Belly as they
walked slowly past, reveling in their glowers.

As they stepped out into the rain, she
shouted back into the pub. “Did you want him for yourself, you fucking queers?”
She laughed again.

He looked back into the pub and could see
Stache and Belly downing their pints and pulling on their coats.

“Feces,” he said.

Her little cripple was doing a strange
hopping hobble that she supposed was his method of running and pulling her
along behind him. They reached a nearby alley and ducked around the corner.

She giggled.

He shot her a glare from his one good eye
and motioned her to be silent. She decided to indulge him and kept quiet.

The swirling mixture of fear, embarrassment
and anger that he was unconsciously transmitting were a heady tonic to her. She
activated her Soul Catcher to capture some of the excess emotional energy he
was giving off. She would savor it later.

He peeked around the corner and then she
felt his wave of relief; their pursuers from the bar must have decided they
preferred the warm interior of the pub to a cold, wet chase. 

He turned back to her and abruptly the
emotional energy he was emitting cut off — he had remarkable control, this
cripple. She was starting to suspect there was much more to him than he let on.

He pulled his hand from his pocket and she
heard a snapping sound followed by twin pinpricks on her stomach. She looked down
and saw two wires running from her belly to the index and middle finger of his
left hand. The tips of those fingers had levered open to allow the wires to
shoot out and lodge in her stomach.

She laughed, not even bothering to pull the
wires out. “A Taser? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You have no idea what you are
dealing with, little man.”

“This is no ordinary Taser,” he said, his
voice low.

She felt every muscle in her body lock as
the current flowed through her. Blackness descended and wiped away her consciousness
before she was able to feel surprise at being taken by one of the Herd.

The Bute building was mainly dedicated to
the Biology department, but a few rooms were set aside for the fledgling
Parapsychology department. The Psychology department was housed in a completely
separate building next to the Bute. When the Parapsychology Department had been
founded, the Psychology Department had lobbied hard and successfully to have
the Parapsychology Department housed in any building other than the Psychology
building, not wanting to risk confusion and have its own fairly recent
credibility linked to the disreputable new science of Parapsychology.

The computer lab in the Bute building was a
rectangular room with a two-foot wide counter protruding from the wall. Putty-colored
PCs were crammed onto the encircling counter, with just enough space between
them to avoid overheating. There were no classes, as it was Saturday morning,
so the lab was packed with longhairs — as Jonni Brown called them — playing
Doom against each other. Finn did not recognize any of them from the Psych,
Parapsych or Biology departments; they were most likely overflow from the IT
and Maths computer labs.

Finn had snagged one of the last available
computers.

He accessed the drive Proctor had made
available to him and was pleased to see that there was a massive amount of data
he could play with. After an hour of analysis he started to feel a little
depressed as he started to realize the scope of the undertaking he had signed
up for. His mild to moderate hangover from the prior night’s revelries was not
helping much either.

He could not remember how many pubs he and
Rebecca had hit on the pub crawl. He vaguely remembered being chased out of the
Cross Keys by some townies after Rebecca dared him to order a cocktail at the
bar. A snowball? Yes, he thought it was a snowball. Somewhere along the way
they had mitotically split into two separate drunken people rather than the
original three-legged drunken hybrid, through the loss of the scarf that bound
their legs. He remembered losing track of all the other pub crawl participants
and ending up, unsurprisingly, in the Student Union.

Every pub crawl he had ever been on — well,
both of them — ended up at the Student Union. It — as well as the Late Night Bakery
and the All Night Garage — was one of the post-midnight lodestones for the
student population in the town, as well as any townies that could sneak in. As
it was Friday night, the Union provided the one club fix — other than the
occasional beach party — that the dance-deprived students of the old University
town craved, the Megabop Disco. The name was rather embarrassing, but the
drinks were cheap and it was full of young people lost in abandon. It could
have been called the Shithole and it would still be packed thanks to it being a
late night hedonistic monopoly. The other pubs in town shut down at eleven
thirty.

He remembered not dancing, thankfully, and
he remembered talking and talking. But most of all he remembered the laughter
that he and Bex shared.

Bex. He subvocalized the word and savored
it.

The longhair sitting next to him glanced
over. He needed to work on subvocalization.

She had told him to call her Bex, not
Rebecca, but Bex.

That small bit of intimacy had been enough
to make his evening, once he got past the awkwardness of saying Bex out loud.
The first few times he kind of mumbled it, as if the word had no right to come
out of his mouth. As the drinks flowed and his shyness waned, her name flowed
off his tongue. He overused it. He would use it in every other sentence so that
it became an inside joke for them.

“Would you like a pint, Bex? Or perhaps a
glass of wine, Bex?”

“So, Bex, do you have any siblings, Bex?”

It seemed kind of lame in the cold light of
morning, but she had found it amusing. Well, she laughed at it anyway.

Hmmm, curious. It really wasn’t that funny.

Maybe she was just pretending to find him
amusing.

Could she have been pretending?

He could feel the demon of self-doubt start
to creep up on him. A drip of cold sweat wended its way down his side.

He replayed the night in his head, looking
for some sort of confirmation that she despised him.

He came up with nothing.

Maybe he was too involved to be objective.
He needed someone to talk it through with or he would never be able to focus on
the huge statistical analysis he had signed himself up for.

Who to discuss it with?

His options were slim, very slim. He
couldn’t talk it through with Proctor; too embarrassing. Dawson, the prick, was
out. Bex herself? He’d rather cut off his left arm. He did not have any family
he could call.

That left his flat mates, Aye and Jonni.
Aye was even more sheltered than Finn and not much of a conversationalist.

That left Jonni. He would have to talk to
Jonni.

He threw up a little in his mouth.

It was eleven thirty on Saturday morning,
so he knew where he could find Jonni, in the Union having his breakfast pint.

He started the laborious process of backing
up his work to floppy disks. He did not want to save any of his real work on
the University network.

“So what happened after I left last night?
Did you call it a night? Go to bed early?” Jonni asked. Finn had found Jonni
waiting in line for some food; it seemed like Jonni was running late as he was
still pintless. They both bought macaroni cheese and chips, the highest calorie
count per penny food that that was sold in the Union, so the Union sold a lot
of it because most students wanted to save their money for booze. They got
their food and waited in line to pay.

“First of all, you didn’t leave. You were
punched in the mouth by a big German and thrown out of the pub.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. That explains the
fat lip. I had a few bevies before we went out. It’s all a bit of a blur.”

“Quel surprise.”

“Hey, I thought we said no frog talk before
noon.”

“It’s twelve oh five.”

Jonni made a face. “Let’s consider the
intention of the law rather than the letter, alright? Anyway, I assume you left
soon after me. I can’t think that you wanted to hang out with Duchess all
night.”

“Well no, not Diana.” Finn emphasized her
name. “I actually stayed out pretty late. I teamed up with that other girl when
you left. What was her name again?”

“Ho, ho, ho. You dirty bastard. You finally
got up the nerve to talk to Rebecca pert tits Jones, did you? Did you do her?
Did you go back to her place and bang her brains out? No, I would have known if
you brought her back to ours; I have a nose for quim you know.” He winked
widely and touched the side of his button nose. Some of the people in the line
in front of them turned to look at them.

Finn tried to pretend they were looking at
someone behind them. “You have a serious problem, you know that? She’s a nice
girl. More than nice. She’s smart, pretty, funny. Just a cool girl. OK?”

“Alright, alright. Sorry.” Jonni raised one
hand to indicate he was backing off, juggling his tray of starch and fat in his
other hand. “So you had fun, then? Did anything interesting happen?” Finn
narrowed his eyes. Jonni continued, “No not like that. Just polite chit chat.
I’m just trying to see if I missed anything. I don’t want to turn up on Monday
and have to ask Duchess for all the goss.”

“Well, one really funny thing happened.”

“Oh, do tell.”

“Well this titchy little Scot got into a
fight with a big German.”

“Ha, fucking ha. See what happens when I
try to be normal?”

“Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

They paid for their food and put it on a
nearby table. Their trays barely fit on the small round table that could double
as a checker or chess board if required. This was rarely required. The only
games played at the tables were drinking games or occasionally some longhairs
would play Magic before the bar got too busy. Finn said, “Want a pint?” Jonni
tilted his head to the side, puzzled, wondering why Finn was even asking. Finn
sighed and went to the bar to get a couple of drinks.

He put the pints of Youngers No. 3 on the
table. He jerked his chin at a girl on the other side of the room, “What’s her
story?”

“She’s crying.”

“I can see that,” said Finn. “Let’s try this
again. Do you know why that girl over there is crying? Did she just hear about
Kurt Cobain or something? Tragic.”

“Aye, tragic.” They both sat in silence for
a second or two, then Jonni continued, “It wasn’t that though.” Jonni leaned
forward over his greasy plate of food and said, “Her boyfriend disappeared.” He
then leant back and continued eating.

“What? What do you mean by disappeared?
Like in a magic show?”

“No. Not like a fucking magic show. Jesus.
It was at the beach party a few days ago. He went for a piss and never came
back. They think he went into the water. They’ll probably find him up the coast
in a few weeks.”

“Tragic,” he paused, “Anyone I know?”

“I think so. It was that guy from
Manchester, you know, the one that always seemed to have a cold.”

“Nope, I don’t know who you are talking
about,” said Finn.

“Andy, I think his name was Andy.”

“Oh you mean Madchester Andy?”

“Have you got a cold or something, too?”

“Huh? Oh, I see. You didn’t get it. He
didn’t have a cold, he deliberately called Manchester, Madchester, suggesting
things are mad there,” said Finn.

“Well, that’s just stupid. Maybe it isn’t
such a tragedy that he went missing after all.” Jonni seemed miffed that he had
missed the opportunity to mock Madchester Andy before he had gone missing.

“Any idea why she is crying at the Union,
rather than at home?”

“Haven’t the foggiest.”

“Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Rebecca is a
cool chick. I like her. She even reads sci-fi,” Finn said.

“Alternative Fiction,” said Jonni

“What?”

“I think we should call it Alternative
Fiction, not sci-fi; sounds less nerdy. I’m sure other girls read sci-fi. They
just don’t admit it. They might if it was called Alternative Fiction.”

“Alternative Fiction? Are you serious?”

“Uh huh, have you ever been on a bus or a
train and seen someone reading a book with a slip-on cover, so you can’t see
what they are reading? Sci-fi, ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time? How do
you know, did you do a study or something?”

“Informally, yes. Whenever I see one of
those covers, I go out of my way to see the top of the page that is being read.
You know, where they often print the title of the book or the chapter, or the
author. Once it was smut, once it was romance and all the other times it was…”

“Sci-fi.”

“Al-ter-na-tive Fic-tion,” Jonni sounded
out each syllable slowly as if pronouncing a difficult word for a child or
someone not fluent in English. “I tell you, it’s lower on the rung of
respectability than fucking Romance. So, let’s change the genre name and see if
people will admit their love of it.”

“See, that is what I am talking about. Bex
just pulls out this Julian May book out of her bag and asked if I read it.”

“Had you?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the point. The
point is, she didn’t claim she had found it on a park bench or that her brother
had given it to her or that normally she read the Bronte sisters or any of the
regular bull feces of the closet sci-fiend. It was utterly and completely
liberating how secure in her coolness she is. I really like her.”

“Yeah, you said that. Now stop your fuckin’
smiling, I am trying to eat.” He then mumbled, “I am sure that those beautiful
pert tits have nothing to do with this at all.”

Finn smiled wider, “Doesn’t hurt.” Finn
stirred the pale macaroni in the thin cheese sauce uncomfortably. “Anyway, I
needed to talk to you and I need you to pretend to be someone reasonable and
sensitive. Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t really think that’s me. I can try
but, you know me, honest to a fault.”

Finn sighed then continued. “Here’s the
problem, I think Bex likes me, but I’m not sure. What if she is, um, I don’t
know, evil or something. What if she wants to make a fool of me?”

“Always a possibility, pal. Happened to me
a number of times … remember that girl on the bike?”

“What? The one that you claimed smiled at
you? The one that you chased down the street?”

“Aye, her. When I eventually caught up with
her, she told me to piss off.”

“With all due respect, mate, not the same
thing.”

“Ah, I get it. You think that Bex is
not
a bitch.” Jonni nodded sagely and stroked his goatee. “We’ll see about that.
Tell me what happened.”

“Well, after the pub crawl we ended up in
the Union.”