First Horseman, The (21 page)

He drove touching 160 m.p.h., headlights on, and the rest of the traffic seemed to melt away, leaving his route clear. His mind was focused on the road ahead, which seemed to pass no faster than normal now that his senses had adjusted to the speed.

(There was a maniac on the road, other drivers observed, and as they saw him pass, they cursed and marvelled. Whoever was at the wheel was taking a short-cut to the crematorium; it was just sad they were bound to take some innocent with them.)

The world had turned to liquid. It flowed around Jim as he hit 200 m.p.h. The Cambridge police were alerted but no one could respond to a vehicle travelling so fast, and today was not the day to stop some drugged-out footballer in his Ferrari: today was the day the whole of Cambridge might be cordoned off.

They watched the unidentifiable car streak up the M11 and wondered who was driving. The number plate wasn’t recognisable by the computers at such speed and was just partially readable by eye as it flashed past the camera. But there was more to worry about than that: something very bad was happening elsewhere.

There was the growl of an engine behind Smith and Stafford, and a bright red sports car shot through the lab’s gateway.

‘Oh dear,’ said Stafford.

‘Oh dear?’ said Smith.

‘Jim,’ said Stafford.

‘Jim?’ said Smith, immediately breaking away from him and heading for the lab.

The car had pulled up and was suddenly the focus of half a dozen policemen.

Jim jumped out, immediately catching sight of Smith. He acknowledged the string of officers as if the prime minister had sent him.

‘What the hell?’ said Smith, bounding over to him.

‘What the fuck?’ replied Jim.

‘Do you know what’s going on here?’

‘Elixir of life,’ said Jim.

‘Bio-warfare toxins.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Jim.

‘Elixir of life?’ queried Smith, raising his eyebrow as far as it could go.

Stafford was waddling as fast as he could towards them.

‘Cardini has developed a medicine that can extend life almost indefinitely,’ said Jim.

‘Renton has turned disease into bio-weapons capable of wiping out everyone.’

‘Christ,’ said Jim, putting his hands on his head.

‘And Renton’s got a girl kidnapped somewhere in this college and we can’t find her.’

Jim looked at Stafford. ‘Don’t tell me.’

‘Kate,’ said Stafford.

Jim spun around. ‘Argh.’ He pulled himself together. ‘Where?’

‘Come with me,’ said Smith.

Renton held the bag. It was perfectly warm. He undid his shirt and laid it on his belly. It felt good, comforting. It was a gorgeous ruby colour, fresh from the woman who was strapped to the chair. He had built the room years ago and upgraded it as technology had changed. It was the garden of his inner life, a dark cinema to the movies he would play in his head. It was a sanctuary protected by silence, profound blackness, isolation and a shield of security. He watched the ground above from his chair, the bag of hot blood soothing him, the elixir taking his mind to planes of intellect he had only guessed existed.

He might be in a squalid concrete bunker but his mind flew far above it. There was no good or evil, no right or wrong, just equations that cycled through our reality and brought pain and pleasure to the ignorant as day and night brought flowers to bloom and wilt.

He was above that now, looking down on existence from a distance at which he could gain true perspective. Draining the woman’s blood was no more wrong than eating a black pudding for breakfast. Humans were animals as pathetic and exploitable as any cow or pig.

He was elevated, he had seen the truth and even when he returned to his former faculties he would remember that all life was worthless, nothing but a collection of sterile information elevated by the few basic principles of physics. There was no god, only agony and ecstasy. There was no personal divinity, only the positive and the negative that balanced the universe.

Smarter, stronger, faster, more agile than the others, he was true to the purpose of existence. The weak were but raw materials for the existence of the strong; the feeble were bags of resources to be exploited for his higher form of life.

The woman was just a plaything to be pulled here and there, to be broken and thrown away. He held up the bag of cooling blood. In a few minutes he would draw another.

Jim looked through the hatch. ‘Down there?’

‘Most likely.’

‘Give me a torch,’ said Jim, staring at Smith.

‘Can’t let you do it,’ said Smith.

Jim sat down and swung his legs into the hole.

‘We don’t have any idea what’s down there, Jim,’ said Smith. ‘I’d go down myself but I might as well tender my resignation right now.’

Stafford handed Jim a silver flashlight and held up one for himself.

Smith looked at them both.

‘I’m going alone,’ said Jim.

‘I won’t slow you down,’ said Stafford.

Jim smiled. ‘My arse you won’t.’ He looked at Smith. ‘You mean to tell me you don’t have a gun or a night-sight for me?’

Smith’s head drooped. ‘I’m a policeman, these days. We don’t use that kind of thing.’

Stafford handed him his pistol. Jim stared at what looked like a relic from a museum. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Does it work?’

‘It’s cocked. Just take it off safety. Don’t yank the trigger. Squeeze.’

Jim tried not to grimace. ‘Thanks,’ he said, smiling as best he could.

‘Don’t lose it,’ said Stafford, as if that was the biggest thing to worry about.

Jim grabbed Smith’s calf. ‘Got to go.’ He shook Stafford’s hand. ‘See you later.’ He began to descend.

*

Something caught Renton’s eye: a little window on the computer screen was flashing. He looked at her arm muscle, red and gently pulsing beneath the opened skin. It was a fine cut, only a little blood extruding; it revealed the marvellous structure below. He had parted the skin without severing a significant vein, so that his view of the underlying tissue wasn’t obscured by a flow of blood.

Someone had entered his labyrinth. He looked down at the oval opening, glittering with silvery liquids. He could deal with the visitor, run, or continue his exploration of his subject. He took the adhesive suture and pulled the top of the incision shut. He took another and closed it completely.

The woman looked at him, eyes wide and full of tears. The tape over her mouth stopped her saying anything and more tape fixed her head to the table. The local anaesthetic in her arm meant she felt nothing but the terror of his examination.

It seemed to Renton that pain was as nothing to the rack of fear. He could feel, as he cut into her, that there was great power to be had from bathing in the hopeless terror of a victim. Was it possible that, as ancient cultures believed, he had been drinking in the soul of his conquest? He had felt as though he was drawing in an essence, like the scent of a crushed flower.

He looked down at the female. She had no more right to life than the billions of animals herded to their death in the abattoirs of man. A few generations ago the slaughter of tribes and nations had been cause for celebration. It was only since people had swarmed into every corner of the planet that humans had somehow gained sanctity.

Now that the elixir allowed him to soar over the stupidity of mankind he could see it for what it was: just another life form preying on others in the primordial soup. Power, experience and longevity were the only purpose; all other dreams were just flames flickering against the wall of superstition.

There was a pleasure in domination, and dismantling this subject creature would give him such a joy. The primitive emotions delivered a wonderful payoff that even his elevated intellect could revel in. Now that they had sent someone into his maze, he might use his superhuman mind and accelerated body to crush the visitor for sport. He would enjoy the killing. He would watch the progress of the intruder and consider what action to take.

How long the serum would keep him on this high plain, he did not know, but long enough, he was sure, to execute his plans.

Kate looked up at Renton. His face was red and grotesquely swollen, as if inflated by an allergy. His skin seemed to glow and his brow hung forward over his eyes. His hair seemed to bristle, like that of an animal shocked into aggression.

She was floating in and out of her body. She knew it wasn’t a nightmare: she was praying for salvation, for a quick death … for a miracle.

She felt as if she had been lying there, taped to the table, for ever.

She had looked away when he had injected her arm; she had looked away when he had begun cutting her. She had tried to reach out for comfort, a place to hide her mind, a way to hide from the horror, but all she could do was try vainly to imagine it wasn’t happening.

Now she was looking up at Renton, his face lit in the gloom by overhead lights that shadowed his face. The whites of his eyes glinted as he seemed to look past her at something far away. What was he about to do now? He had done something to her arm, cut it open, she guessed. She closed her eyes.

Renton’s face, which had been clear in his mind as he had climbed down the ladder, had faded to that of a demonic goblin, a sneering, leering, bearded troll. Jim gritted his teeth as he walked slowly along the tunnel. Everything that had been somersaulting through his mind as he climbed down had fallen away. There was only the dark tunnel and himself. His eyes had become accustomed to the light of the torch and now the tunnel was as bright as any room.

What kind of D&D fantasy world had been built down here? The tunnels cried out for flakes and nerds to explore and hide in. It was just the sort of place he would have loved if he’d ended up at Cambridge doing some silly arts course. While those kids had been drinking, shagging and smoking weed, he had been fetching coffee on the trading floor of a big bank, happy to kiss the arse of any trader who demanded it.

Those thoughts, too, were falling away.

There was just him, the tunnel and the freak who had taken Kate. He was going to find Renton and wring his neck. To do that, he had to focus. He had to be in the moment. He had to keep his whole consciousness in the immediate now. He mustn’t get distracted.

By the faint light of the torch he could see as far ahead as he needed. This was Britain: anyone wanting to take him would have to do it hand to hand. His thinking fell away again. Now there was just him and the tunnel ahead, the smell of dust, silence, a veil of darkness beyond the reach of his torch’s beam.

*

Renton sat by the monitoring equipment and watched the screen. He could see a figure coming down the primary tunnel. To have any chance of finding his lair, the man would need to go left at the second spur. If he went down the first, he would travel the best part of half a mile before a dead end forced him back. Then several branches would overwhelm him and hopelessness would force whoever it was to surface, lost and disorientated.

If the intruder took the wrong route, Renton would return to work on his subject.

He looked at the body on the table. It was stiff and alive, not malleable and inert. He had dreamt of this moment for so long. He had fantasised about this scene a thousand times. He had planned and imagined every detail, himself a terrifying god, bending the puppet to his will, twisting, cutting and dismembering it.

A little something flashed white in front of Jim; he flicked his light down. It was a small piece of tissue, a crumb on the dusty floor. Next to it he saw footprints, two sets, in the grime. The tissue looked fresh, unlike the rest of the tunnel. Was it a sign from Kate? Were they Renton’s footsteps alongside hers? It felt right, it felt real, and all he needed was a trend to follow.

Renton’s hairs prickled inside his nose as they stood on end. The figure had passed the first fork and was continuing down the primary tunnel. It was a long artery with seven spurs; the man would travel the full length and then, seeing the exit, go through it into the basement of the main college building a quarter of a mile ahead. When the intruder passed the second turning he would get up, turn the monitor so he could keep a better eye on it, then start the vivisection of his subject.

He smiled comfortably to himself as he watched. He was the master of the labyrinth: he knew all its forks and tributaries. No one would find him in his private sanctuary. It would take days to track it down on a branch of a branch of a branch of a branch of the maze.

Jim followed the footsteps as they seemed to turn a corner into another alley. At the fork lay another piece of white tissue a little way in. Jim’s face tensed. He had found the trail. She was leading him on.

Somewhere down these dark, dusty tunnels the creepy Renton was with a girl Jim barely knew, a beautiful, sensitive woman who had put a smile on his face and, for a few fleeting hours, made him happy.

He looked up the tunnel. There was only him and the silent, shadowy forms lit by the flashes from his torch.

Renton stood up, pushing his chair backwards. He was bobbing up and down with anxiety. The intruder had made the correct turn.

There were two turns to the right, then more to the left. The first turn to the right was the correct route. If he came down it, he would be getting warm.

Renton stared at the screen, his brow furrowed. What were the chances of that? The first might be a logical route to take, but after that, one turn was as good as another.

Kate was trying to look at Renton, but her eyes could not swivel that low. All she saw were her cheeks and a blurred image of him staring at something. The muscles in her eye sockets ached and she strained the few millimetres the tape would allow.

She dropped her head as her neck muscles cramped.

Renton squealed. The figure had turned right. The man was coming for him as if he knew the exact route. How could that be? He stared at the screen, his head jutted forwards.

‘Footprints,’ he cried. Then he reprimanded himself: ‘You’re getting complacent, you idiot.’

Jim stopped in his tracks. Had he heard a distant cry? He strained to listen, but there was only the sound of his breathing and the thud of his heart.