Down: Trilogy Box Set (58 page)

A camouflaged Land Rover came into view followed by a parade of them progressing slowly down the road.

“I still don’t know what the bloody army’s doing here?” the first constable asked. “And why they’re putting out all this nonsense about bioterror while we’re prancing about without protective gear?”

The sergeant seemed thoroughly disgusted by the situation. “Stop asking questions and start searching.”

The front door was unlocked, the way the police had left it after their last sweep. After announcing their presence with a perfunctory, “armed police,” the two men entered and started with the formal sitting room, their fingers resting above the trigger guards of their short-barreled rifles. The only place to hide was behind a sofa, which they eliminated with a glance.

“Kitchen,” one of them said.

There were plates on the table with a two-day-old, hastily abandoned lunch. They opened and closed the pantry and broom closets before progressing to the powder room, downstairs closet, and then the small den where the curtains were drawn.

One of the constables switched on the overhead light and pointed to some empty bags of crisps and chocolate bar wrappers on the floor by a chair.

“Was this mess here last time?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Me neither. These houses are all looking the same by now. Upstairs then.”

The master bedroom was en suite with fitted wardrobes along an entire wall.

The bed was unmade.

One of the officers sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Smell that?”

“Yeah. Bloody pong. Maybe they left their moggy behind and it croaked.”

He opened the nearest wardrobe door while the other constable knelt and peered under the bed.

The kitchen knife swung into the meat of his shoulder an inch clear of his bulletproof vest.

He shouted in pain and fear and squeezed off a 9mm round wide of the mark.

His partner sprang up and confronted the wild-eyed young man wielding a bloody knife.

“Drop the weapon now!” he shouted.

The man sprang out of the wardrobe. The officer fired once, striking him below the diaphragm but he kept coming. Rather than finishing him off with a chest or head shot he rammed the steel stock of his assault rifle into his forehead, dropping him like a stone.

“All right, mate?” he called to his partner who sat on the bed, pressing his free hand against his bleeding shoulder.

“Yeah, get me a towel or something and call for an ambulance before both of us bleed out. Christ. It wasn’t a dead cat was it? He’s the one who smells to high heaven.”

“Is he out of surgery yet?” Ben asked an MI5 agent who was staking out the waiting area across from the recovery room.

“A few minutes ago.”

“And?”

“The doctor told me he’s in serious condition but he’ll live which is …”

The young man caught himself and was about to say something but Ben, who was within earshot, stopped him. There were a few people across the lounge on a vigil for a family member.

“Hold the thought, all right?” Ben said.

He knew what his colleague was thinking.

How can he live when he’s already dead?

The consultant surgeon, a Mr. Perkins, was aware of two oddities about his patient, Mr. X, beyond the fact that he had been shot by armed police. The first was that he had been told the security services “owned” the case. The second was that despite a thorough antiseptic scrub before and after surgery, his body smelled of decay. With a combination of irritation and curiosity he agreed to meet with Ben in his office.

The surgeon, a take-charge type, immediately asked Ben, “What’s this all about?”

Ben answered his question with another. “What was the nature of her injuries, doctor?”

“I can only give out his condition to immediate family. I don’t suppose you’re a member of his family.”

“I am not.”

“Then I believe we’re finished.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He is not yet conscious. Now we’re finished.”

“Hardly. This is a special situation involving national security interests,” Ben said evenly. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen. First, you’re going to give me a report on his condition and prognosis. Then you’re going to have him transferred to a private room before he is able to communicate with anyone. Neither you nor any personnel from the hospital will see him again. He will be quarantined with armed guards outside his door. A team of MI5 doctors and nurses will be arriving any time now. You will brief them on the work you performed. They will exclusively take over his care until he is ready to be discharged into our waiting arms. Is all of that perfectly clear?”

“Who do you think you are? Get out of my office!” the surgeon fumed. “The next person I’ll be calling is our chief executive who’ll be barring you and your lot from the premises.”

Ben took a letter from his breast pocket and handed it over. “This is for you,” he said. As the doctor was ripping it open, Ben continued, “This is jointly signed by the home secretary and the secretary of state for health. It lays out what I just said with considerably more legalese. If this matter were not so urgent I would have been more pleasant. I am not, by nature, an abrasive person. But I’m afraid this is what must happen.”

The surgeon sat behind his desk to finish reading the letter. When he was done he looked up and asked, “Who the hell is he anyway?”

“He is a very great threat to this country, that’s who he is.”

“He’s where?” John asked, arching his eyebrows.

“Four floors below us in the recovery room,” Ben said with a deliberate deadpan. “I had him taken to this hospital so I could kill two birds with one stone.”

“Very funny.”

“He’ll be moved very shortly to a room on the sixth floor. When he’s able to talk I’d like you to assist in his interrogation.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Other than his aroma, no. He’s thin, not much flesh on his bones at all, bad teeth, patchy hair, bad skin. All signs of malnutrition I’m told. He’s young, not much more than a teenager. Beyond that, he knew how to handle a knife. That’s it.”

“Most of them are like that, the ones who live outside the palaces. It’s a very harsh environment. They get pretty beat-up looking.”

“Probably not much different to your average peasant in the middle ages.”

“Except that some of them have been at it for hundreds of years. So he’s the first one captured.”

Ben nodded. “That’s right. He was hiding right there under our noses in one of the vacated houses on the estate. We’ve had all the houses searched yet again but it looks like the rest of them have slipped the noose. If Brandon Woodbourne’s behavior is instructive then the rest of them could be holding hostages in homes or in abandoned buildings anywhere within an indeterminate radius.”

John held his tender flank in anticipation of coughing. “If they carjacked someone or if they’re modern enough to know how to drive they could be anywhere in England by now.”

“Have you seen the way the media is handling the story?”

“I’ve watched a little TV, yeah.”

“Then you’ll know that some cracks have begun to appear in our story of a terror cell and bioterror hazard on the estate. Despite our information blackout and no-fly zone above the estate, journos have been using Google street view and tax rolls to place names and faces with every quarantined house and they’ve gleefully broadcast the details. Every single family has been there for a good while and there haven’t been any renters. They’ve tracked down several evacuees whom we’ve put up in hotels who’ve said there was nothing suspicious in the neighborhood until approximately 10 a.m. when a number of dirty and smelly men and women began running through the estate, threatening them, forcing their way into homes, and stealing whatever they could get their hands on. That was, of course, before the local police arrived and well before tactical units came onto the estate. So how that squares with a raid on a terror cell is very much in question.”

“You’ve made your bed,” John said. “You’ve got to stick with the story. What’s the latest on figuring out how many are missing?”

“We’re increasingly sure there are eight unaccounted for. There was a medical doctor and his domestic partner, an architect. Next door to them were four builders who were doing a renovation project along with a female council employee performing an electrical inspection. Then there was a stay-at-home mum in a third house next door to that.”

“Which means eight Hellers if the one-for-one rule is still in effect.”

“That’s our working assumption. With one in custody that leaves seven unaccounted for.”

“Seven extremely dangerous people,” John said grimly.

“I assure you, I won’t rest until they are all apprehended,” Ben said.

John gave Ben a look that intended to say, I know you’ll do your best. Then he sighed and said, “I don’t know who I’m more afraid for, the people who cross paths with the Hellers here or the twelve poor souls from Dartford and South Ockendon who woke up this morning to another day in Hell.”

There were eight of them dispersed in three groups in the middle of a featureless, grassy meadow. In the first group were two men, both about forty. Twenty yards away were four more men, ranging in age from twenty to sixty with a woman in her fifties. A further twenty yards away from those five was a lone woman in her thirties.

It was a gray, windy day and the tall grasses made waves of green and yellow. A dense wood was off in the distance several hundred yards away. A single hawk on the prowl circled high above. No one spoke but all of them, except one, behaved almost identically. With blank, open-mouthed expressions they pirouetted, tamping down circles of grass as they looked for the houses and roads that had been there only a moment earlier. The one outlier was the oldest man in the middle group who, with a terrible cry, crumpled to the grass.

One of the two men in the first group asked his companion, “Martin, what’s happening, what in God’s name is happening?”

“I’ve absolutely no idea, Tony.”

Martin was tall and handsome with an erect posture that came from years of practicing his hobby of ballroom dancing. Tony was shorter, more muscular, and far more volatile.

Tony began to hyperventilate. “Are we dead?”

To Martin, the idea wasn’t as ludicrous as it sounded so he did what any man of science might do. He checked his pulse at the neck. It was faster than usual but it was very much there. “Of course we’re not dead. Take it easy, you’ll make yourself ill.”

Tony bent down, hands on knees, to counter a mounting faintness. It was then he realized his Lycra cycling shorts were gone and his underpants were precariously loose.

“What happened to my shorts?” he whispered.

Martin had fared better. His khakis were in place although his zipper was not, and his oxford shirt was buttonless. An insect lighted on his ear and when he brushed it away he noticed his ear stud was gone.

“Our missing house and missing neighborhood are more of an issue than your missing shorts,” he said. “Come on, let’s speak to the others.”

The second group stood their ground as Tony and Martin approached. The biggest man, with bib overalls, half-falling down over an enormous gut pointed at them and shouted, “Here, you two, don’t come no closer!”

“Why not?” Martin called back.

“’Cause we don’t know who you are or what your intentions may be.”

“I’m Martin Hardcastle from number fourteen and this is Tony Krause. Our intentions are to find out what just happened to us.”

“You’re from number fourteen?” the man asked.

“I can’t actually point to the house as confirmation but that’s where we’re from.”

“We was working on number sixteen,” the man said.

“Ah, the builders. We’ve been hearing your racket for the last week.”

“Come on then,” the man said, waving them forward. “I’m Jack. It’s my renovations company. These are my lads and that’s my dad,” he said, pointing to the older man on the ground, wincing in pain.

The sturdy, middle-aged woman blinked rapidly, as if she was the only one who thought proper introductions seemed absurd under the circumstances, but she capitulated. “I’m Alice Hart. I’m from the council, the electricals inspector.”

“How do they look?” Martin asked.

“How does what look?”

“The electricals.” When no one saw the humor, he apologized and they hurriedly queried one another as to what was going on.

“There’s got to be a rational explanation,” Tony said.

“Aliens,” Jack’s youngest son said. “Alien abduction. There’s all sorts of stuff like that on YouTube.”

The stray woman slowly approached.

“Isn’t that Tracy from number eighteen?” Tony asked.

The woman had dark hair and a paper-white complexion. She was barefoot and clutched a terry-cloth robe to her throat to cover her nakedness. When she got within a few yards she stopped. They saw she was crying.

“Now, now, love, I’m Alice. Come over. We’re all friends here. We’re just trying to figure out what’s happened to us.”

“Hello, Tracy,” Martin said. “It’s Dr. Hardcastle from number fourteen. It’ll be all right. There’s got to be an explanation.”

“What kind of doctor are you?” Jack asked.

“Medical doctor.”

“Can you see what’s ailing my dad?”

He kneeled beside the man and asked what the problem was.

“My hip,” the man groaned.

“I see. Is the discomfort sudden?”

“Yes it’s sudden,” he said intemperately. “It’s been right as rain ever since my surgery.”

“I see. Surgery for what?”

“To replace my hip, of course. Two years back.”

“May I?” Martin asked, laying him down on his back and palpating the right side of his pelvis, then the left. “What kind of hip joint did they use?”

“Titanium.”

Martin sat him back up, stood and muttered to himself.

“What is it then?” Jack asked.

“His artificial hip isn’t there.”

“What do you mean, not there?” Jack’s older boy asked.

“Not there, like all of our zippers not being there. Like our buttons not being there. Like my ear stud and wristwatch not being there.”