Spiral (31 page)

‘Yes, daddy,’ pouted Natasha smartly. ‘Remember that there are ladies present.’

‘Yeah, ladies armed with guns and quite capable of dropping dangerous men and women without regard for where their brains and bones scatter…’

Natasha made a rude noise before turning back to the monitor.

‘Shit,’ hissed Gol, sitting up suddenly. ‘Something is wrong.’ His gaze flickered to the plasma screen - but there was nothing, nothing visible, no Nex sweeping down, no armies of tanks lumbering over the horizon.

‘We’re still safe,’ said Natasha uncertainly.

‘No, no, it’s this. A PB: panic burst.’ Gol pulled free a small black device on which a red light was glowing. Gol licked his lips, his stare coming up to Carter and Natasha. ‘We only use this for a breach ... The fuckers must have out-wired our electronics... but how? Fuck, fuck! Look, if anything should happen we have a rendezvous point for emergencies. The coordinates are 551.222.222.340; the ECube can patch them through, but remember that ECube security has been breached - you could be transmitting to the enemy.’

Carter pulled free his Browning and hoisted the SMG...

His mouth was suddenly a desert canyon floor.

He felt a stirring deep within his brain; like a lizard uncurling from a century of sleep around a rock.

Bullets screamed, a line of them smashing an inch above Carter’s head and denting holes along the flank of an armoured vehicle. There was a
slap slap
of impacts in flesh and a soldier sitting atop a Pig, smoking and nursing his gun, was cut in half in a violent spray of blood. The top half of his body was punched out of sight behind the huge vehicle as his legs dropped, twitching and drooling trails of crimson to the ground.

‘Down!’ screamed Carter as gunfire erupted all around - and he suddenly
knew,
remembered the digital avoidance of his own network back in Scotland, how a single Nex had evaded all his home-made electronic traps ... and the bastards had done the same here -they’d bypassed the security networks and were now—

Inside the canyon.

Why use tanks when subterfuge could carry the game off more smoothly?

And Carter knew: the tanks were a bluff. To draw their attention. After all, who
wouldn’t
hear a fucking tank coming?

Carter hit the dirt hard, Natasha beside him.

Gol slammed against a Pig as engines roared all around and machine-gun bursts echoed and screamed among the fumes. Carter glanced left and his eyes bulged like marbles from their sockets. A swarm of about a hundred Nex emerged from the trees and sped with incredible agility across the killing ground between the line of Pigs and the orchards—

Machine guns thundered.

‘Aim for their heads!’ bellowed Gol and, ducking low, charged behind a Pig and towards the wall of the white house. Carter rolled onto his belly, took aim with the SMG, and fired a burst. A Nex was picked up and slammed into the earth with a hole where the face had been. Carter chewed his lip grimly. To one side a Pig revved and charged at the Nex, guns blasting from behind the slits in the windows. The hefty front iron bumper smashed into two Nex and heavy wheels ploughed them into the ground, crushing their limbs and torsos. There was a
click
, followed by a concussive
boom.
The Pig was picked up and tossed spinning into the air to skid onto its side, slamming into a tree. Fire licked from the insides. Black smoke rolled skyward.

Carter could hear men screaming.

Insanity followed. The Nex came from everywhere, charging at the Pigs with guns roaring. More detonations sounded and Carter and Natasha backed towards the white-walled house that they had originally thought was Gol’s home. Both were firing, SMGs clattering in their grips. Carter sent bullets scything across a line of Nex -but they did not go down. Their attention was diverted his way and chips of stone and plaster were chewed from the walls behind him.

‘Fuck,’ he screamed, dropping to his knees and fumbling with the Sterling’s magazine. The Nex charged - but were cut off by a rumbling Pig that ploughed into them, scattering bodies, tossing them high in the air like limp rag dolls.

They hit the ground hard.

Most rolled to their feet.

‘I’m here!’
came Kade’s sudden triumphant crow.

‘You are not needed!’ snapped Carter within the asylum of his mind. He wiped more sweat from his eyes, -wiped his hands on his shorts and fired another four-round burst into the Nex, who were shooting from the edges of the trees - many had been forced back by the sheer volume of projectiles spewing from the Pigs.

‘You need me Carter; let me, let me do what I do best
—’

‘Get the fuck out of my brain, Kade!’

Carter blinked.

Something dark and ominous crept like a nuclear winter across his soul: superimposed across the beauty before him was a dark shroud like nothing he had ever seen before and his senses flowed, time slowed, everything went—

Black and white
—

‘We have to get back, get back inside the house...’ he hissed.

Natasha nodded, gun clasped tight.

They started to creep along the wall. Bullets were coming from all directions, and several Pigs were churning about in front of the house, their guns thundering. The bodies of men and women littered the ground. A Pig wreck billowed thick black smoke.

‘What is it?’

‘The tanks are coming,’ said Carter bitterly.

Suddenly, distant gunshots ceased. Machine-gun fire rattled to a halt. They heard the distant roaring of engines; an explosion boomed down the canyon, deep and rumbling, reverberating from the valley walls.

There came more exchanges of gunfire.

The sun beat down. Carter wiped sweat from his brow. His mouth was dry - too dry - and his ribs and several other minor cuts were nagging at him. Worst of all was his nose - broken one too many times, it impeded his breathing and the pain annoyed him.

There was a
boom
of heavy-calibre.

A Pig had been positioned between the trees - suddenly it was gone, disintegrated, a thousand panels of twisted steel spat up and out like a giant exploded grenade ... a black flaming mechanical carcass sat where the vehicle had been, three wheels attached to a fire-raped dented chassis. Carter shook his head, dropped his SMG and made a grab for Natasha’s hand.

‘This is fucking insane - we have to leave.’

‘Where’s my father?’

‘It’s too fucking late for that! Come
on!’

‘I don’t want to die like this,’ said Natasha.

‘I don’t want to die at all,’ said Carter.

They sprinted for the door. Carter ducked as a
phat phat phat
smacked against the tiles above him, describing a diagonal down the wall. There was a scream to his left as a woman was punched flailing from her feet, scrabbling at her throat, blood pumping between useless grappling fingers, her gun and this war suddenly forgotten in her bright hot agony. She squirmed for a moment and Carter leaped up and emptied a full magazine into the charging mass, which spread out as if welcoming his bullets—

Natasha screamed.

Carter whirled - but too late, a figure was upon him... Natasha’s gun rattled in her hands and gunfire echoed inside Carter’s head and all around ... he slapped hard against the dirt, and for a second thought he was dead. Carter kicked out, heaved the dead body from him, rolled to see madness exploding around him. The Nex had charged again, and the men and women of Spiral_F were being slaughtered.

Carter pulled free the trapped SMG and shot the Nex - which had cornered Natasha - in the back of the head, watching the brains emerge in a spray and the figure toppling to reveal Natasha’s shocked visage staring dumbly at him. He reached forward, grabbed her, screamed, ‘Where the fuck is Gol?’

Natasha did not speak—

‘Are you hurt? I said,
are you fucking hurt?’

A figure ran at them - Natasha whimpered - the SMG in the figure’s hands lifted a fraction and Carter could see the finger on the trigger, sensed the applied pressure, pushed Natasha away and squeezed his own SMG’s trigger at the same time as he dived—

Bullets skimmed past Carter’s face, so close that he felt the breeze of their passing; a line of bullets caught the figure and slammed it into the air where it spun for a moment, then landed twisted and dead.

‘Come on.’ Carter snatched Natasha’s hand and dragged her after him. To one side he could see a small group of men kicking at a Nex on the ground; two Nex leaped to its aid and there was a short and very bloody exchange. Carter sprinted to the house and stopped suddenly in the doorway. He checked behind him—

He wasn’t sure how many were still alive - how many of Spiral_F, or how many of the enemy - as he glanced down at Natasha, who had been dragged along behind him in his mad flight for temporary safety away from the gun battle. There were spots of blood on her face, and Carter could feel her hands shaking. He looked into her eyes and said slowly, ‘Don’t panic, Nats. Come on - I need you focused. We are not going to die - I promise you I will protect you—’

‘How can ...’

‘Shh.’ He put his finger against her lips. Then he leaned forward and kissed her softly, whispering again, ‘I promise you I will protect you—’

‘Liar...
’

Carter heaved Kade away with such a blast of mental anger and hatred and violence that he felt Kade spat into a dark infinity - and calmness settled on his mind, an insane sort of calmness which he had only rarely experienced before in highly dangerous combat situations—

His brain ran to codes, to numbers—

Everything was clear—

Black and white—

Logical.

No emotion no panic no fear—

It was what had marked him out for the Demolition Squads in the first place.

‘Follow me.’

Carter led the way swiftly, Natasha close behind him. They entered the house through a narrow bullet-chewed doorway; behind them rattles of gunfire still burst through the orchards, decimating the trees. But the noises of violence were growing less. Spiral_F had been overrun.

Carter gripped his Browning tightly with his free hand and inched forward down the corridor towards the bright light on the other side of the room. He wasn’t even sure where the SMG had gone, which episode of the insanity had removed the weapon from him.

His hands were slippery with blood. Was it his own? Or that of a Nex?

Nex, spat his mind.

What the fuck had happened to the world?

Carter paused. Something in his soul howled into his consciousness, a warning as—

Three Nex came smashing through a huge patio-type window in a sudden flurry of movement that shattered the stillness. Their masked heads were down as a shower of glass vomited into the room directly in Carter’s path, scattering across the floor like diamonds tossed at his feet. As their boots hit the tiled floor and their SMGs lifted, Carter’s Browning snapped up and he squeezed the trigger - bullets ripped across the short space—

Carter leaped towards the figures. Two were smashed immediately from their feet, clawing at bullets in their faces. The third leaped at him as—

The Browning clicked on empty.

The dead man’s click.

The kiss of death.

A fist slammed forward, an inch from Carter’s nose and he twisted, left elbow coming around with incredible velocity to crack against the Nex’s head, hammering the killer’s head down onto his rising knee which connected with bone-jarring force.

But the figure still managed to slam a fist into Carter’s chest.

He was lifted vertically, pain smashing through his entire body, vomit splashing from his lips. He seemed to halt in mid-air, then fell suddenly and hit the ground hard with a dull
thud,
groaning in agony. The Nex stepped over him, moving towards Natasha—

Carter rolled over, foetal, disabled ...

—A punch to the heart... an induced heart attack—

Natasha cowered in front of the masked figure that was poised, ready to strike, a cobra with a fixed stare. The Nex stopped, swiftly bent to retrieve an SMG and pointed the dark emotionless eye at Natasha’s face—

Carter, unable to breathe, almost unable to move, fumbled in a time-vacuum to slot a fresh mag into his gun; then he dragged the Browning into his line of sight. He felt his hand, wavering, felt his vision warp for a split second and nausea screamed through him and he pointed the Browning and time had slowed and his calmness and his serenity had gone and this was Natasha, Natasha his love and she was going to die with hot metal in her brain and it would be all his fault and he had promised—

Promised to protect her—

Promised to keep her alive—

Seven bullets hissed past the Nex’s ear.

The figure whirled - but Carter kept on firing and the figure was suddenly jerked and kicked up and back, holed and smashed and bleeding, to twist and flip and land in a heap on top of Natasha. She screamed, a long low animal sound. Carter felt the Browning click on empty and he crawled to his knees—