The Brink (7 page)

“I’m... following... on foot... You’ve... got a... minute or two... they can hear... fighting...”

It was then that they caught sight of Moll charging across the open ground from the left, her ears flat against her head and her brilliantly white teeth barred, catching the laser light with a horrifying glow. She leapt into the window before both of them realised she was there and instantly a cry of terror silenced the battle.

“Jesus Christ!” cried Reb, rushing towards the door. “Gary, we’re going in. Did you see that?” All her calm, icy exterior was gone and she almost took the door clean off its hinges to get inside.

Alan knew what to expect but Reb saw it and froze in horror, blocking the entrance so that he had to force his way past. There, in a thick pool of gore, were the two attackers and standing over their savaged bodies was Moll, her mouth trailing long strings of blood through her matted fur. There was a large chunk of meat between her teeth which she proceeded to swallow, turning to look at them both.

“Alan!” said Reb. “She-” A wave of nausea swept over her and she doubled up, emptying her stomach with a noisy splash that managed to cover one of her boots.

“What’s happening?” called Gary. “We need to get inside - secure the main building before the rest show up!”

Alan put his hand on her back. “We need to go.”

“I’ll never underestimate that dog again,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They ran for the relative safety of the central building just as the first shots came out of the early dawn and hit the steel exterior with such ferocity that Alan stumbled and threw himself inside. Moll was fast on his heels and made it just in time for Gary to drag the solid metal door closed again.

“What now?” said Reb with her hands on her knees, panting.

“Steve - are you still out there?” asked Gary placing his fingers to his earpiece to try and listen over the din of gunfire.

“Yes sir. I’m hunkered down near one of the wrecks. They’re surrounding you. I hope you have a plan!”

“We’re working on it,” came the reply. Gary turned and looked around. They were in the reception area - a large, spacious room with a sweeping oak table and a single chair behind it. On the walls around them were large glossy prints of fighter craft, tanks cresting battle-scarred hills and soldiers wearing the most up-to-date armour and posing for the shot as if they’d won countless wars already. On the far wall, behind the chair, was a screen which had probably shown silent videos of their products in action, defeating the enemy and generally selling the worth of the Forces to the highest bidder. It was lifeless now and stared vacantly at them as if wondering too what their next move would be.

There were two doors, one on either side of the desk, and not a lot else. Alan looked around, trying the handles and found them both locked.

“Break it,” said Gary. “We don’t have much time.”

Both he and Reb took turns in kicking the doors until the wood gave and splintered beneath their boots with a loud crack.

“They secure their front door with steel but their internals are cheap wood,” muttered Reb. “Gary - which one?”

There were no signs, no indications of where the garage was located and Gary shook his head.

“Take a guess.”

Alan followed Reb down a long, dark corridor with overhead lights that flickered into life as they tripped the motion sensors that controlled them. Frozen images of the past glowed as the bulbs warmed up like a museum display, telling the faint, almost forgotten history of the place as they passed each booth. It was the administration block and each abandoned work station with its blind computer monitors and empty swivel chairs of cracked leather held the old world in neatly partitioned areas, never to be disturbed again save for these intruders with their new world trampling.

“Keep going,” said Gary. “They’ll be through in no time.”

At the far side of the mausoleum, behind a row of meeting rooms with glass fronts, there were a flight of stairs and an illuminated green sign above the door pointing down towards the garage.

Reb was through first, sweeping her rifle from side to side, clearing the corners with smooth, efficient precision as she headed into the darkness. Alan saw lights coming on below them, responding to their presence with a kind of eerie excitement as if the building were pleased to finally entertain living people again.

Their boot falls sounded in the narrow confines of the stair well and made a brave attempt at meeting the distant gunfire head on. It lost the battle to a terrifying explosion that chased them through the office block, turning the building’s initial excitement into a trembling horror.

“RPG,” muttered Gary as they descended.

The stairs ended and the garage was illuminated before them. Reb shoved through the doors without pausing for breath and a cold draft whipped around Alan’s ears causing him to shiver involuntarily.

“Over there,” she called, again covering the open tarmac with swift arcs of the rifle. Across the vast expanse of the underground garage, amidst a redundant collection of parallel white lines, were four enormous trucks: the Rhinos, and they sat facing the exit ramp, ready to go. Around them were scattered tool boxes and parts and it looked like they weren’t the first to realise their value to the survivors.

“They had the same idea,” said Reb.

“Yeah but at least we’ve interrupted them in time. They must have been waiting for more of their crew to arrive. A day or so longer and this place would’ve been empty,” replied Gary. “Reb, get started on them while Alan and I cover you.”

“Yes sir,” was the quick reply and she slung her weapon, jogging towards the titanic machines.

“Alan, get over to that first pillar and cover the stairs. I’ll move to the right and we’ll get them in a cross fire.”

“Do you think we can take them?” he asked, doing as he was ordered.

“Don’t have much choice, do we? At least we have them bottle-necked. The outer doors are still down.”

With that he ran to his spot and knelt down behind a concrete barrier, tapping his radio again. “Steve, how’s it looking?”

“They’re in, sir. They blew the door apart with an RPG. Killed one of their own in the process.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he replied. “Can you follow them in? Come up behind them and get them shitting their pants?”

“Can do. They’ve gone in after you and left no guard so I’m pretty free out here.”

“Okay, be careful. That big table as you go in should make a pretty solid piece of cover.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

“Alan - here we go. Short, controlled bursts. Watch out for RPGs”

He felt a tension in his stomach as vague blurry shapes began to form behind the toughened safety glass. He dropped to a sitting position, almost lying back on the cold floor with his feet in front of him, touching the pillar so that he formed the smallest target possible; a fresh magazine in his lap ready to change. Smythe had been right - counting shots was much harder than the laser had ever been.

“Contact!” cried Gary and his weapon spoke. The doors had opened and the first one in had fallen into a crumpled, smouldering heap that now choked the doorway. Another tried to clamber over him but Gary fired again, grazing his shoulder and causing him to stumble forward and run to the right. Alan took aim and pulled the trigger. The scavenger pitched forward and landed face-down on the tarmac.

Gunfire and laser discharge was quickly heard upstairs as Steve began to add his own shots to the melee.

“How are we doing, Reb?” asked Gary as he jacked another cell into his rifle.

“Five minutes.”

The doors were suddenly enveloped in flame and flew apart, landing inches away from Alan’s pillar with the roaring explosion following hot on its hinges. He recoiled from the deafening blast and for a moment allowed one of the scavengers to slip past him to the right of where he was.

“Gary - on your left,” he called, recovering himself and rolling sideways to get a better aim. Bullets struck the tarmac near him and he saw his attacker hiding behind another barrier.

Alan was on his feet and moving as fast as he could, heading for the far left wall where unmarked crates had been piled up. He felt Moll nearby and it was only when a stray beam tore through his calf that she turned and sped towards its source, leaping the barrier and snarling her defiance as she brought the scavenger to the floor.

He stumbled into cover and took a look first at his leg, then at Gary who was concentrating on another contact to his right and hadn’t seen him fall. In moments the wound had gone from a crusty black hole to perfect pink flesh again and he was on his feet, thankful not to have been noticed.

“Gary, I’ve got four dead up here. How are you doing down there?”

“They’ve blown the doors but I think we’ve nailed four more. Any sign of the rest?”

“Negative. Must be in these offices some-” Tearing gunfire. An explosion.

“Steve?” called Gary. “Steve, what’s happening?”

“I’m on it, cover me,” said Alan, rising from behind the crates and running for the stairs. Gary’s contact fell in a scorched mess as he did so, having exposed his upper body as Alan had come into his view. “Cover Reb.”

Alan stepped through the choking debris and over two blackened corpses before taking the stairs two at a time, gagging on the dense clouds of smoke that billowed upwards towards the next three floors. Suddenly remembering to change mags, he popped the clip just outside the door to the administration block, pocketed the empty and rammed a fresh one home. It wasn’t a fluid motion for him yet and while he fumbled with the Velcro straps and tight fitting slots, he peered through the glass.

“Steve?” he whispered into the radio. “Where are you?”

With the XC10 ready again, Alan stepped into the corridor and raised the carbine to his shoulder, sweeping back and forth as he moved towards reception. The entire display of history, untouched until that day, now writhed in the swirls and eddies of noxious black smoke that had followed him up the stairwell giving the scene a strange, other-worldly appearance and made his task of clearing the area all the more difficult.

“Steve?” he called again. Nothing.

“What do you see, Harding?” asked Gary.

“Not much,” he muttered.

He reached the end of the corridor to the reception area and looked around. The table hadn’t been touched or moved into a firing position. He crouched down low and moved to the left, then back to the right, looking into the booths as he went. It was only as the smoke cleared a little that he saw him.

“Steve?” he said but he knew the answer would never come. There, hidden behind a flimsy wooden partition with a gaping laser blast through it, was Steve. They were his boots and clothes, but his face was missing and all that remained were a few scraps of scorched hair and fragments of super-heated skull.

“Harding, did you find him?” asked Gary.

“He’s dead,” he replied. “They got him.”

There was a noise behind him and Alan spun round just as a shot barely missed his face, searing a path along his cheek. It was too late to raise the carbine. The scavenger charged with a knife in his hand and all he could do was close the distance, grappling with him and falling backwards over Steve’s body as he did so.

On the floor the scavenger was in his face, breathing heavily with stinking gasps and his heavy body pressed down on him, forcing one of Steve’s boots into his back. The blade was poised near his shoulder, the point pressing against the fabric of his smock and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it for much longer. It was with a sudden cold realisation that he came to know another disadvantage to his curse - it robbed him of the grim determination to survive. The scavenger had the fire that burned in his eyes as he knew he was on the verge of dying if the knife didn’t plunge home. He felt weakened by his own longevity and perhaps that was why he let go of his hold on the man and allowed the blade to drive straight through his muscle and flesh and stop somewhere behind his shoulder blade.

The scavenger grunted, feeling that he’d won as Alan’s body relaxed under him. But his undoing was in attempting to pull the knife free rather than stop him from raising the carbine with its small frame to his temple and pulling the trigger.

Moll met him at the bottom of the stairwell and lapped at his hand as he offered it to her, stepping through the opening and walked into the garage.

“You okay?” called Gary, giving him a thumbs up. Alan nodded, checking that his chest rig covered the wound that was now healed and crossed the open tarmac towards the nearest Rhino without looking back. Gary caught up with him.

“Was it quick?” he asked.

“Yeah. It was.”

“Climb in. I’ll get the shutter. Reb will take Steve’s truck.”

Moll didn’t need much encouragement and she leapt into the cab some 3 metres taller than her with ease whilst Alan scaled the narrow ladder and seated himself in the passenger seat. They were hard, plastic and practical kinds of chairs but there was plenty of leg room in spite of the amount of equipment that’d been crammed inside it. There was a smell of age and dust in the cab and it reminded him of something far off, like a half-forgotten dream or a memory deep in the past. The dashboard seemed to pulse as the engine idled, almost hypnotic in its display, regressing him to a former life that hung on the edge of consciousness.