Quake (34 page)

Leviathan Fuels have currently been storming the globe with massively expanding fuel sales, an economic alternative to petrol-and gas-powered vehicles that requires nothing more than a simple engine modification. They recently acquired emergency-service and military contracts on an almost global scale, and it is rumoured that they are in the running to supply a new type of LVA which NASA and other space agencies can use to power contemporary developments in space-going propulsion systems. They are also rumoured to be developing a new type of shuttle engine - with NASA, the RFFSA and the CPLSA.

Verisimilov’s family were unavailable for comment on the brutal, vicious and bloody execution of a beloved husband, father and grandfather - despite constant and repeated questioning from a variety of media.

T
he pain from the HPG blast and the fight fuelled Carter. His teeth gritted as the ScorpNex leapt towards him on the bridge across the valley - but even as the huge creature leapt, the Browning flew from Mongrel’s sweating bloodstained fist. Carter caught the weapon, skidded to a halt, lifted the gun and fired—

The first bullet missed.

The next two crashed into Dake’s already battered chest...

The fourth glanced from an armoured plate on the ScorpNex’s face, and its leap faltered. It fell, landing clumsily, a claw coming up to its side in a reflex gesture. A low growl spat from its twisted mashed fangs and Carter sprinted forwards, booted feet connecting with Dake’s already smashed face. The ScorpNex teetered -then stepped backwards and toppled through the ragged, splintered hole left by the HPG blast.

It vanished ...

And everything suddenly fell silent.

Carter and Mongrel met on opposite sides of the hole and looked down where the ScorpNex tumbled towards the ground far below. There came a deep, echoing crunch.

‘What fucking ugly son of bitch,’ said Mongrel.

‘You looked in the mirror recently?’

‘What was it, Carter?’

‘Some kind of Nex.’

‘You did well then,
compadre
.’

‘Thanks for the Browning.’

‘A pleasure. Cup of tea?’

Carter grinned wearily through the caked blood on his face. ‘I’d fucking love one, mate.’

Darkness was creeping softly over the horizon and insects chirruped in the long grass, calls echoing back and forth from their hidden sanctuaries. Trees wavered gently in a breeze that mercifully dispersed the humidity of the early-autumn evening. Carter dropped to the ground, winced at the pain in his body and limbs, then fished out a cigarette and lit the weed with shaking fingers.

‘I thought you were quitting.’

‘Yeah, yeah, fuck off and see to your new girlfriend.’ Mongrel reached down and placed a hand against Carter’s shoulder, making him wince a little in pain. Carter glanced up into eyes filled with concern. ‘You OK, mate? You did well back there - really, really well ...’

‘I’ll live.’

‘Which is more than I can say for that ugly fucker,’ snorted Mongrel. He patted Carter’s shoulder and moved to the KTM’s packs and the medical kits within.

Carter sat for a while, savouring the cigarette smoke and allowing his body to calm itself after the violent adrenalin rush of the previous few hours. He looked at his hand, which was still shaking, and smiled to himself. A long time since I got the shakes, he mused.

‘Yeah, which just shows that you’re returning to your mental roots.
‘

‘Meaning?’

‘That you’re growing soft again. Where’s the tough-fuck Carter I know and love? The one that blew the faces from three terrorists in Egypt with a High-J shrapnel bomb and kept their face skins as souvenir masks? Where’s the cold-hearted bastard who shot that South African woman in the back of the head, even after she had surrendered? And where’s the fucker who murdered them all - the men, the women and the fucking children - on that hot sunny day in Belfast?’

Carter’s cigarette smoke plumed blue into the sky. He watched idly as Mongrel helped Mila remove her holed and bloodstained jacket.

‘In Egypt, I kept the face of
one
terrorist because that was all that was left of him, and Spiral wanted DNA samples to link him to bombings across four different continents. The South African woman had killed six DemolSquad members with a sniper rifle, one of them a very old friend and I knew she would fucking get off on some international diplomacy clause and continue her reign of slaughter ... and Belfast?’ Carter’s voice went terribly cold. ‘Why, Kade, Belfast was all
your
doing.’

Mila was lying back, her head resting on Mongrel’s jacket. He was laughing and joking with her.

Kade faded, gently, slowly, leaving Carter with a throbbing head. He killed the cigarette and ground the butt into the soil with his boot.

Kade was wrong, he knew.

Kade was wrong about him ...

Once, a young and newly recruited Spiral operative on Demoll8 had said to him, ‘Wow, you’re Carter ... the Butcher ... the man without fear.’ The young man’s eyes had glowed with awe and apprehension — and a need to be like Carter.

It had disgusted him.

Made him feel unclean to his very core.

There are no more heroes, he thought.

No more heroes.

They just didn’t get it. Killing wasn’t something that was good, that was fun, something you could just do and go home, have your tea and put your feet up and watch TV, secure in the knowledge that a good shower would wash away the blood. Killing was just something that Carter had to do because he had to do it. He was good at it, he acknowledged ... brilliant, even. And he was intelligent enough to understand that the people he killed, the people he murdered, were bad men and women, killers themselves, terrorists with soft civilian targets in mind. He was protecting the innocent. Cleansing the scum from the earth.

And yet he knew that his hands would never, ever be clean ...

And it burned his soul with darkness; with bad blood.

‘Carter!’

He glanced up, lit another cigarette, and was glad to see that his mild case of the shakes had subsided. He stood, groaning at the pain. The HPG had kicked the living fuck from his body and he started to wonder if retirement wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Yeah, retirement - again.

‘Aye?’

‘You need to hear this.’

Carter moved closer, looking down at Mila who glanced up at him, a nervous smile on her lips. She looked to Mongrel for reassurance, and he beamed a winning, encouraging smile - the same smile that had bedded him many a drunken lady. Carter shook his head in weary disbelief.

He forced a smile to his face, despite the pain.

‘Yes?’ he sighed, catching the canteen that Mongrel threw. Standing slightly behind Mila, Mongrel cupped his hands to his chest and winked. Carter shook his head again and took a long drink of warm water.

‘Tell him about the quarry.’

Mila smiled again, seeming to relax a little. Mongrel had dressed the wound well and her painkillers were kicking in.

‘There are many of these, how you say, Nex there. They always wear masks, they always have those bright copper eyes and they are so fast... so fast...’

‘You say they killed your brother?’

‘Yes. He was only thirteen, out with four of his friends. They were children, Mr Carter, they were only little boys. They tried to get away, ran through the woods. One had lagged behind, saw them all shot in the back by these Nex and then dragged off through the trees. They were given no warnings, no mercy.’

Mila was crying now, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, her face looking down at the ground and her mud-crusted boots. Carter felt his chest tighten, his heart going out to this beautiful young woman ...

‘Careful...
’ hissed Kade.

Carter ignored him and, reaching out, took her hand. It was lightly tanned with long fingers and rough nails. But it was a pretty hand and Carter looked up to realise that she was looking at him, looking at him strangely.

‘You say there are many Nex at this quarry. How many?’

‘I have seen maybe one or two hundred.’

‘What?’

‘There are barracks. And there are human workers there as well, men, engineers who work on the machines.’

‘What machines?’

‘The pumps.’

‘Pumping LVA?’ asked Carter softly.

‘Yes, the new fuel, I think. It is taken in tankers - I have seen all this.’

Carter smiled, squeezing her hand, and said, ‘We need to see this place. Are you ready to move?’

‘Carter, she’s just been fucking shot...’ said Mongrel.

‘Are you ready to move?’ he repeated.

‘I will show you. Are you going to kill them?’

Carter pulled free his Browning HiPower and checked the thirteen-round magazine before hammering it back with a solid
click.

‘Yeah, we’re going to kill them all,’ he said coldly.

‘There’s my boy,’
sneered Kade.
‘Just like the old days ... Welcome back, Butcher.
‘

Darkness flowed over the woods. It flowed over the mountains. It gradually extinguished the light in the sky like a thumb and forefinger snuffing out the glow of a candle flame.

A gentle wind stirred the tall grasses in the valley, and blew the warm scents of a dying summer over the rocks where something moved. Slowly, a dark shape gradually uncurled and turned small copper eyes towards the moon.

The ScorpNex growled softly, claws moving across its body and dipping into the wounds it carried, wounds that went deep into its frame and caused it a burning agony it would never forget.

Pain pulsed.

But, more than this, a need pulsed within its mind.

A need to kill.

Revenge.

A need to kill Carter ...

The ScorpNex rolled onto its side and lay drooling for a while, and then it heaved its bulk onto its knees and vomited on the ground. A low keening sound came from its broken jaw and it managed to pull free a tiny grey ECube - a copy of the Spiral-issue device. The grey plates spun free and a voice spoke.

‘You failed.’

‘Yes.’

‘How could you fail?’

‘Carter ... he is ... hard to kill.’

‘Can you walk?’

‘I ... think so.’ Claws clamped tight shut in pain. Copper eyes glittered.

‘Can you hunt?’

‘I need help.’

A sigh. ‘Stay where you are. We have your location -we’ll send in a chopper, bring you out.’

The signal died, the grey ECube copy whirring to itself.

The ScorpNex rolled onto its back and made soft sounds of pain. But in its eyes burned a singularity of purpose and a need for revenge.

The two KTM motorcycles cruised down the dirt trail as darkness finally fell. Much to Mongrel’s disappointment Mila had chosen to ride with Carter. As they cruised, tyres crunching, Carter was painfully aware of her delicate hands on his hips, the slim and beautiful woman pressed close behind him, her face against his broad, heavily muscled back.

Focus, he thought.

Flicking on their headlights, they slowed their speed as falling darkness impeded their progress. Mila pointed out the mountain trails they were to traverse.

They travelled through the night, passing down a long winding trail that descended alarmingly along the side of a mountain through dense woodland, switchback bend after unlit switchback bend, hairpins chasing hairpins until it briefly levelled and then began to climb steeply, straightening as they ascended another mountain trail through night scenery of moonlit splendour.

At one point Carter rolled to a halt and Mongrel pulled up beside him.

‘What is it?’

Carter pointed. There, ensnared in his headlight beam, was a brown deer, eyes wide, nostrils flared. It suddenly started, galloping off into the darkness. Carter grinned.

‘I love this place,’ he said.

‘Such a shame we have dirty job to do.’

‘Yeah, a real shame.’

They travelled warily for perhaps a couple of hours along dangerous roads and trails. Eventually Mila patted Carter’s thigh and he pulled over to the side of the road.

‘It is best we leave bikes here,’ she said, her lips close to his ear. ‘You want me climb off?’

‘Yeah.’

The two Spiral agents quickly cammed up the bikes and then, allowing Mila to take the lead, they set off through thick forest, once more climbing a huge rugged mountain and fighting their way through the trees.

Occasionally the moon fell behind clouds. Then complete darkness dropped like an obsidian cloak. Mila stayed close to Carter who refused to return her rifle, allowing a disgruntled Mongrel to strap it to his pack instead and hump the excess weight like a pack mule, muttering a string of expletives.

Both men carried their M24 carbines with reloaded magazines. Both felt twitchy, watchful after their realisation that Jam had not been on such a simple SAD mission - but a much more dangerous operation.