Quake (20 page)

‘There’s a crèche, you moron.’

‘For fuck’s sake! A crèche
here
?’

There were five children, milling around the doorway to the roof, their small bodies framed by a rectangle of yellow. They moved slowly, in a daze, directly opposite to where Carter and Nats stood gazing over the chasm in front of them.

More machine-gun fire howled from the streets below as Spiral led an offensive against the Nex. Nex bodies were flipped spinning and spraying gore, until a large detachment of DemolSquads forced the Nex further back, away from the perimeter of the rumbling building, and set up a temporary front line of safety before the shaking Spiral HQ.

As Carter glanced up, Natasha turned, ran and leapt the four-metre-wide chasm between the two sections of the building.

‘No!’ he snapped - but it was too late.

She landed lightly, boots crunching stones, and glanced around, grinning back at Carter. She sprinted forwards and gathered the children to her, the girls crying into her shoulder, the boys with tear- and grime-smeared cheeks trying to look brave in the face of this nightmare.

She herded them towards the gaping rift, which groaned and grumbled.

The building - or its two separate halves - rocked dangerously, steel and concrete screeching in torture, showers of dust and tiny lumps of concrete raining down.

Carter whirled and grabbed at the nearest man’s sleeve. ‘We need help.’ He met the huge man’s stark grey-eyed stare. Carter pointed.

The man, bearded, clad in black and with an SA1000 slung over his shoulder, nodded and followed Carter to the edge of the precipice. ‘Hold my back.’ Strong fingers grasped him, and Carter edged himself towards the crumbling torn edge.

The quake smashed more waves of destruction across London.

Again, Spiral HQ trembled as the earth beneath it was raped.

Natasha picked up the first child, a blond-haired boy with a red nose and snot covering his upper lip. Her stare met Carter’s as she gave a smile of calm and control - and threw the child across the abyss. Carter caught a tight grip on Tigger dungarees, and he turned, depositing the child on the ground. ‘Over there!’ shouted Carter. ‘Go to that woman over there!’

Seeing their plight, more Spiral operatives had come to help. As the earthquake roared around them and they faced certain death, they put aside their own fears and need for escape to offer help—

Natasha threw the second child. Carter caught it.

Stone crumbled from the edge where he stood and he glanced down involuntarily. The stolen Nex helicopter was a crumpled heap now, compressed and crushed between the heaving, buckling stone, brick and steel. Huge strands of reinforcing wire stuck from the concrete like severed rusting arteries. Far below, Carter could see fire and smell burning. Smoke trailed up towards him in lazy black spirals.

The third child flew across the gap, arms flapping, and smashed into Carter’s chest. His own arms wrapped tight, securing the little girl, and he passed her back to the human chain that had leapt into existence to aid these stranded children ...

The fourth child came, screaming, mouth wide. Carter grasped at her as she bounced and slipped, but his strong powerful fingers grabbed her clothing and passed her gently to the ground.

‘Mummy!’ she whimpered.

The huge man with the beard smiled, and patted her head. ‘She’ll be on the ground now, luvvie. Go on over to the chutes - it’ll be fun and then you’ll see her again.’

‘Thank you.’

The big man smiled again, then grasped Carter’s jacket more tightly.

‘One more.’

‘One more,’ agreed Carter, breathing deeply.

Black smoke billowed up from the unnatural crevasse. His gaze met Natasha’s through the smoke and heat as more tremors roared around them. Carter could feel the building moving beneath his boots and he suddenly felt sick to the core of his soul.

What
the fuck
is going on?

Natasha lifted the last child in her dirt-smeared fingers. A little boy, short hair, chubby tear-stained face, but with a look of defiance on it: he dangled precariously from her grasp. She took a step back and Carter could read the exultation of rescue in her face, in her glowing deep brown eyes as she launched the boy across the chasm and through the smoke and Carter’s hands grappled blindly, slipping from the boy as the Spiral man behind him reached forward, plucking the child from Carter’s fumbling grip and hauling the boy to safety ...

There came a deafening, screaming roar that went on and on and on and Carter wanted to cover his ears and his eyes were streaming and then he was engulfed by a wave of dust from below which cut into his eyes and mouth and he yelled, saliva drooling from grey lips. The section of the building on which Natasha stood began to sway crazily and she lost her footing and fell to one knee. Her stare was fixed on Carter through the dust as the building moved, shifted and started to crumble ...
‘No!’
snapped Kade.

‘I can save her,’ growled Carter.

He leapt across the chasm, into the dust.

The TV sparkled into life with a digital buzz of electro-hum, diamond-sharp images spinning and morphing into the jewelled liquid logo of Leviathan Fuels.

You may be wondering who Leviathan Fuels are? After all, we have only been on the scene for a few months, but with this ...
Over-cheerful Japanese scientist holds up a small metal object with a complex series of tubes and dials
...
you can convert your road vehicle, be it diesel, petrol or gas, to run on LVA for only a few hundred dollars
-
LVA, a new fuel for the future, the fuel of choice for over two million happily satisfied customers...

Scene dissolves:
two cars driving through spotless mountain passes high in the Alps. One car runs out of fuel and an angry man stands by the kerbside, kicking the tyre and pulling his Mr Bad Mr Angry face, whilst the second car...

Scene cross-fades:
drives on, and on, children [1 x black, 1 x white, 1 x oriental] singing happily on the back seat and playing extremely violent hack-and-slash-’em-ups on their 3D HoloStation ...

400 hundred miles to the gallon! Go on, make the smart choice ... choose Leviathan fuels. Your children deserve a better future ...

Scene/text scroll R—M. [Arial black] acr. vid:
And now, we have over 11,000 fuel outlets across the civilised world!!! Be smart! Become a Leviathan! Leviathan Fuels will change your life.

SCENE DISSOLVES TO RED

W
hen you’re a kid, summer lasts for ever. School finally shuts in a tumult of chaos and high spirits, and the weeks stretch away for an infinity, long days spent running through tall grass, down the park, the Church Fields, through Witch Woods and towards Jacob’s Ladder and the Old Nazi Bunker where they imagined a previous litany of war crimes had taken place.

Summer lasts for ever ...

‘Until you die,’
sneered Kade.

The pain whirled inside Carter’s brain: the agony of memories; the poisoned narcotic needle of childhood; the atomic blast of innocence and naivety and the high bright insane fucked-up whirling loss of these delicate treasures ...

‘It could never be the same again,’ he muttered.

As the black quake dust filled his mouth.

Oh, to be a child again,’
mocked Kade.
‘To languish in the mire of mockery, to paddle in the piss-stream of puerile poetry, to reel in the eternal uncertainty of pain and confusion and hate
...
it is like a dream to me, a bad dream, a dark dream ... the best of dreams, my dark and twisted brother.’

‘
Remember it?’
whispered Kade.

‘Remember it, my friend?

‘Surely you hadn’t forgotten?

‘Surely you hadn’t forgotten about ... Crowley? How poetic. How romantic. So beautiful I could be fucking sick ...’

It was summer. The days were long. The summer holidays had come and school was like a distant mad, bad dream. The days flowed into one another as the boys played on Church Fields: one day they were soldiers engaged in some terrible war against terrorism - just like their dads - another they were space heroes spat out into the universe on a terrible mission. On yet another they were aircraft pilots, killing all the evil and terrible drug barons in Colombia. They ran through the grass, into the woods, down to the river. They played in the park, in the concrete tubes, on the swings and the slide. They paddled in the shallow fast-flowing river, imagining incredible depths sporting terrifying monsters. Morris brought his BMX-i with Alloy-Kick2 to enable high stunt-jumping and they built a ramp off the top of the steps leading down the edges of the Church Fields; they dared one other to jump the two-metre drop and Carter was the first, flying through the air with a shout of triumph, the BMX-i landing with a violent wobble and a clang as the back wheel bottomed out through under-inflated tyres.

The days were long and good.

Childhood, it seemed, would never end.

‘But you’re not thinking, Carter, not thinking straight. Have you forgotten Crowley? Have you forgotten that bastard? What he and his friends did? Don’t tell me you pushed that out of your mind as well, you spineless worthless cheap whore bastard...
’

‘Get him!’ came the roar.

‘Run!’ hissed Carter.

‘Why?’ asked Jimmy in innocent fear.

‘Run!’ Carter cried.

They ran, Carter holding Jimmy’s hand, guiding his blind brother down the narrow woodland trail; they stomped through mud, kicked nettles and plants from their path, could hear the distant roar of the river. They suddenly changed direction, trying to lose their pursuers. We can hide by the river, thought Carter, Jimmy’s hand sweating with fear in his own. He tugged Jimmy along, guiding the younger lad, his brotherly need to protect intense ...

‘And the rest,’
mocked Kade, ‘
Don’t blank it out, Carter; remember it. Remember it all.
‘

‘We’re going to kill you!’ came Crowley’s hoarse thundering yell.

Evil laughter drifted down through the woods; a comedy accompaniment.

Carter could hear the river growing closer. He increased his speed, dragging Jimmy along behind him. The two boys hurtled down a narrow trail, weeds and nettles whipping at their bare legs.

‘I can’t run any more,’ wept Jimmy.

‘Come on, push yourself...’

‘I can’t!’ wailed the younger boy.

‘Come
on!’
Carter hissed, slapping his brother around the back of the head. ‘You’ll get us both caught and Crowley will mess us up bad. You remember what he did to Morris? You
remember
? He’s still in the hospital!’

With Jimmy wailing they pushed on, the sound of the river coming closer and closer and closer; and then it exploded into view in a burst of colour and noise and movement and Carter dragged Jimmy to a halt. There was a steep drop directly ahead of them, sheer rock falling into the fast wide flow that cascaded violently over pebbles and large water-polished boulders.

‘Where are we?’ came Jimmy’s panicked voice.

Carter’s twelve-year-old gaze swept along the river bank. And then he saw it: a huge wide pipe crossing the river. A makeshift bridge whose interior was used to carry sewage. It was bright green and had two high iron-railing fences at each end to protect its precious cargo from the abuse of vandals.

‘This way.’

They ran along the top of the river cliff towards the pipe.

The boots of Crowley and his band of followers -Glass, Trigger and Johnny Jones, and a couple of nameless giggling girls in the chase for fun and the cheap thrill of bullying - thundered after the two boys. Rain started to fall from a suddenly dark sky.

The narrow ledge rapidly became muddy, slippery and treacherous. Jimmy clung with one hand to Carter, and with his other to clumps of grass, his mouth gasping at the sudden violent downpour, his lips twitching with fear and surprise at this sudden change in their fortunes . .

‘You’re making me wet!’ screamed Crowley from behind them, his logic twisted, his hatred a physical entity living like a demon within his big fists.

Carter stopped and turned, his hair plastered to his head. Crowley was grinning at him from the beginnings of the narrow ledge; behind him his worms jostled, vying to see what was happening. Carter heard the giggles of the girls, Mandy and Trish, the stink of their cheap child-whore perfume drifting through the rain.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ said Carter, his voice low and suddenly dangerous.

‘Or what?’ said Crowley. ‘I’ll do to you what I fucking did to Morris. And he’s still in the fucking hospital.’ ‘Why don’t you just leave us alone?’

Crowley said nothing, just grinned a real nasty grin. His shaved head gleamed under the rain as the smirk fell from his face, leaving a mocking evil in its wake.

‘We know you’re strong,’ said Carter wearily, wiping rain from his own face. ‘What have you got to prove?’

‘Nothing,’ snapped Crowley. ‘Nothing at all. I just like hurting people.’