6
Sitting in the back of the Mastiff that Kunaka had acquired on the strength of a phone call, O’Connell looked at Suzie Hanks.
She didn’t return his gaze. He’d upset her. He knew this because he knew her; every nuance in her emotional arsenal, and every inch of her delicate body. He’d made a gaff. And now she was letting him know.
After their briefing, O’Connell had placed a hand on her arm and steered her to another part of the room. She sensed something immediately. His eyes never lied to her. She loved the way they never tried.
“What is it?” she asked bluntly.
“You can bail from this, Suzie.” O’Connell’s reply was cautious; testing the water.
“Bail?” she quizzed, but knew what he meant. “As in not go?” Incredulity coated her words. Her top lip turned white. “And why would I want to do that?”
“You probably wouldn’t,” O’Connell sighed. “But I thought I’d give you the choice.”
“I’ve made my choice. I’m part of this team. My name’s in The Consortium’s hat just like everyone else’s.”
She caught something in O’Connell’s face; it was fleeting but she spotted it with ease.
“What?” she said sternly.
“You’re not known to The Consortium,” he admitted sheepishly. He could take out a guy twice his size, without hesitation or regret, but right then he couldn’t look into her eyes.
“Why?”
It was such a small and simple word, but the answer was big and so complex he paused to get things straight in his mind.
“I wanted to -” He stopped and changed direction, “I needed to make sure that you were ...”
“This isn’t about me at all is it?” she interjected with uncanny accuracy. “It’s about you.”
His shoulders sagged with resignation. He couldn’t deny that his decision not to inform The Consortium of Suzie’s involvement was to make sure she would be safe. Safe from the job, safe from those who would stop at nothing to get the job done. And safe from the retribution that would most certainly follow should they fail. O’Connell wanted to protect the one thing in his life that he held above all; the purity of one person’s commitment to another. From the second Suzie had climbed from the parapet at his insistence, O’Connell couldn’t help but protect her. Maybe it was because of her old man, maybe it was because it was in his nature to protect what he considered vulnerable, or what he cared for dearly.
O’Connell knew that he would give his life for Suzie Hanks, but she would never let him do it. Her nature was that of strength and resolve and pride. It was this latter element that had taken a pounding. O’Connell had tried to keep her safe, and had only succeeded in making her different. And for Susan Hanks this was a painful act, an act of betrayal. Seven years of ritualistic abuse at the hands of her daddy had made her different. She didn’t want reminders; she wanted inclusion.
“I did it for the right reasons, Suzie,” he whispered reaching up to touch her arm. She allowed the action but didn’t respond to it. Her eyes were cold with hurt.
“It was wrong,” her words were without malice yet this somehow made their sting far more potent.
“Yes,” he conceded. “I’m sorry.”
“You can say it again when we’ve done the job,” she said turning away.
His arm stayed in the air for a few seconds before he allowed it to drop to his side, redundant for a while.
“Hey, boss?”
O’Connell blinked away the memory and saw Clarke’s spot blasted face wavering into view.
“What is it, Clarkey?”
“How come I only get a pistol?” the younger guy grumbled.
“The weapons are a last resort,” O’Connell said, his tone cautious. “It’s unlikely we’ll be needing them. So don’t fret, okay?”
“Well, if these things are just for show, why can’t I have one of those rifles?” Clarke said in a petulant tone.
“Because you’ll probably shoot yourself,” Amir grinned next to him. “Then you’ll be no good to anyone. If you ever were.”
“My mother loves me,” Clarke said pulling a disgruntled face.
“She clearly doesn’t love you enough,” Amir replied.
***
The A38 splits Birmingham City in half. As the primary access route, the road is often congested and sluggish and doesn’t stop being as such until the early hours of the morning; where it becomes home to taxis ferrying clubbers and late night revelers back to the surrounding suburbs.
Because it was the main road into the city, it was likely to be fortified to the hilt. As such O’Connell instructed Stu to avoid it. The Mastiff approached from the market town of Bromsgrove, using a sequence of rat runs that made the passengers feel as though they were constantly turning either left or right every few hundred metres.
The view inside the cramped space was limited, the level of patience amongst the passengers, equally so. Suzie continued to keep herself closed off and Amir and Clarke sniped at each other. In this atmosphere O’Connell felt the first stages of doubt begin to churn in his belly. He stamped it out immediately, the way a vindictive child pounds upon a redundant toy. This wasn’t the time or the place for hesitation.
That was the sort of thinking got you caught. Or worse.
***
“Talk to me, people!”
Colonel Mark Carpenter walked through the Operations Room. Until an hour ago the room had been part of Birmingham City Council’s Social Care Offices. Now it was home to the MoD rapid response team who had stripped it out and filled it with their own monitors and computers. Ahead, the six personnel operations team took to standing to attention at his approach.
“At ease!”
Carpenter was fifty-five years old and for well over thirty eight of these years had served his country with tours in the Desert Storm Campaign, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Experience and high rank meant that the respect of others came easily to him. He had nothing to prove and no reservations about making sure that the mission was completed with nothing less than total success.
But this current situation was different. It was different because he was reliant on external intelligence networks. Something significant had occurred and information was shady at best. And when Intel was unreliable missions tended to fail. Lives were often lost.
And that would not do.
“I’m listening but hearing nothing, people!” Carpenter said briskly. “I want to know what’s going on and who is responsible! And I want that information now.”
His steel blue eyes pierced the room before locking onto a young Corporal.
“What’s happening, lad?”
“An explosion, Sir,” the corporal replied, shrugging off his nerves. “We believe the source was the Penthouse suite of Dr. Richard Whittington; most likely the result of an extremist cell of the AAL.”
“I could have gotten that from any news channel on the way in,” Carpenter snapped; but he addressed it to the room. “What do we know of Whittington? What’s his current security status?”
“He’s no longer live on the grid, Colonel.” This came from a young woman, her pretty face made severe by the way her dark hair was pulled back and clamped into a bun.
God, thought Carpenter, was I ever that young?
“What was he working on when he was live?”
“Bio-weapons division,” the woman said. “Several projects, all top secret. But one of them is off the grid.”
“Explain,” Carpenter said.
“Codename L.I, Sir,” she continued, un-phased. “Whittington was working on something that got him fired by the MOD and all his access privileges were subsequently rescinded. It appears that he was working outside his brief.”
“He must’ve had a project team,” Carpenter surmised. “We got names?”
“He was operating alone. There are reports - rumours - that all his research disappeared.”
“Stolen?”
“Destroyed,” the woman replied.
“So what was Whittington doing now? Who was funding him?”
“Recent Intel suggests that the doctor was a consultant for Phoenix Industries.”
“Remit?”
“Science technology. Whittington appears to have been on their books since leaving his MoD position in ‘84.”
Carpenter nodded and turned to a large soldier standing to his right.
“Harte, we need a representative of Phoenix Industries here. Get someone. Bring them here naked if you have to.”
“Yes, Sir,” Harte said with a snappy salute, and hurried off.
“So what’s going on in the target zone?” Carpenter asked the room. “And tell me we’ve commandeered CCTV monitoring from civilian access?”
“CCTV monitoring is ours, Sir,” the Corporal piped up. “The city centre is quiet, no sign of activity.”
“That’s an issue in itself,” Carpenter observed. “Where are the people?”
“Probably taking cover,” the Corporal suggested. “Maybe waiting for us to go in and get them.”
“No one’s going anywhere until we know what we’re dealing with,” Carpenter retorted. “What’s giving us concern?”
“This, Sir.”
The female operative sat down at her work station and began typing on the keyboard in front of her. The VDU flickered and an image suddenly appeared. It was grey and grained, the flare of sodium street lights creating deep shadows, the cobbled pavements wet with spring rain.
“This is Brindley Place,” she explained without turning round from the monitor panning left to reveal a canal flanked by a series of bars and eateries. Save for the street lighting all the buildings were dark.
“What am I looking at?” Carpenter said leaning forward.
“Take a look at the tow path, Sir.”
Carpenter was close enough to her shoulder to smell her perfume. Against regulations of course but he was prepared to let it go given what was unfolding on the grey screen in front of him.
On the path separating the restaurants and bars from the canal, bodies lay strewn and still. Many were dressed in suits; the garb of business. Some were men, some were women, but all were twisted, backs arched; arms and legs contorted into implausible shapes.
“They died in agony,” the woman said flatly.
“Indeed,” Carpenter agreed. “But what killed them?”
At this point in time, no-one could offer any answer. And even if someone had any notion, no matter how remote, they would never have had chance to voice it. Because: the next moment the door to the small operations room flew inwards to allow a short, stocky man to march towards the Colonel.
The newcomer was dressed in black fatigues and sported a blonde marine regulation hair cut; shaved to reveal a money box scar on his crown.
The marine stopped short of Carpenter and offered the Colonel a salute almost as smart as the soldier’s appearance.
“At ease, Major,” Carpenter said. “What brings you here?”
“Looks like somebody made a mess, Colonel,” the Major replied as he stood down. “And I’m here to clear it up.”
***
Major Edward Shipman was simply a soldier. As such he saw things in simple terms. It was a doctrine that had served him well in his fifteen year career. Sure he’d navigated Sandhurst with some trepidation. He was, after all, the son of a sheet metal worker, he was never going to have an easy time in such an auspicious institution. But his cunning, resolve and the simple brutality he exhibited to potential antagonists served him well during his forty-four weeks of officer training. Such aptitude for covert practices meant his career in special ops was pretty much sure fire, though he hadn’t sought it out.
It had sought him.
A nameless/faceless operative in the higher echelons had heard “good things” about his work in Bosnia - where he covertly trained Serbian rebels into an effective militia; right under the noses of their Croatian oppressors - and within ten years Shipman was now out of the UK more than he was in it; not that anyone would be able to find his name on any mission or op sheet.
“I presume you have information for me, Major,” Carpenter said.
The two officers were sitting in an office just outside the main operation room. It was small and the air was heavy with the sickly smell of industrial air freshener.
“I have an update from our Intel network, Sir.”
“Drop the “Sir” bullshit, Shipman,” Carpenter said without animosity. “What you got that you can’t show our ops team?”
Shipman fished inside the pocket of his fatigues and removed a data flash-stick. It was bulky, black and hexagonal, and encrypted to the hilt.
He pushed the stick into the USB port on his smart phone. After typing in his password the tiny screen yielded its secrets and he handed the device to the Colonel.
Carpenter scrolled down the digital page, his face grim. Opposite, Shipman watched his superior, his expression impassive. Patient.
“Dr. Whittington has been busy since he left our arms,” the Major said.
“So it seems,” Carpenter conceded.
The screen flickered again and the Colonel read out the heading on the page.
“The Lazarus Initiative,” he said. “Was this one of our projects?”
“It was never on record. It was mooted by Whittington in the eighties,” Shipman confirmed. “But it was deemed too expensive. And morally compromising for the MoD.”
“So save my eyesight, Shipman,” Carpenter said placing the smart phone on the desk.
“Whittington suggested that what he could create was a soldier that couldn’t die.”
“That’s bollocks, isn’t it?” Carpenter said. Shipman’s neutral expression suggested otherwise.
“Whittington hypothesized that if a soldier was killed, how could we make the body continue fighting? Continue killing?”
“It’s hard to believe such a thing is possible.” Carpenter’s skepticism kicked in for a while.
“Click onto the video link at the bottom of the page,” Shipman instructed. “This clip was taken from CCTV footage thirty minutes after the explosion at Whittington’s apartment.”
Carpenter did just that, and couldn’t believe what he was watching. It was footage of Broad Street, the entertainment hub for over a million visitors a year. But there wasn’t any bustle or signs of revelry. As with Brindley place, the bar fronts were dark and uninviting. But there was some movement. A lone figure ambling in the middle of the road: a middle-aged man. His legs were bowed, as though they wouldn’t be able to support his weight, and his right arm was missing above the elbow. The camera suddenly zoomed in on the man’s face and Whittington had seen enough death in his lifetime to recognize it immediately. This was, without question, a dead man walking.
“My God, did Whittington actually do it?” Carpenter muttered in awe.
“Not with our money,” Shipman said coldly
“Meaning?”
“We can assume that Phoenix Industries have funded Whittington’s research. Now the experiment has escaped from the Petri dish.”
“So what are we saying here, Major?”
“Birmingham is infected with the offshoot of Whittington’s Lazarus Initiative,” Shipman explained. “So we can only presume that those inside its radius are infected. The way the Initiative works is academic but the symptoms are a painful, agonizing death. And then -” the Major stopped as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to air his thoughts.
“Then, what?” Carpenter asked looking at the screen as the dismembered man bumped into a lamp post.
“Re-birth,” the Major whispered.
***
The Mastiff slowed before coming to a complete stop; its big engine growling. From his position in the back of the truck O’Connell sensed that this was pre-emptive. He talked into his headset.
“Update, Kunaka?”
“Road block: four hundred metres. Instructions?”
“Let’s go and say ‘hi’,” O’Connell said. “Good luck, people.”
His hands closed upon the SA80 sitting across his lap.
“I thought that was just for show?” said Clarke, his voice trembling slightly.
O’Connell didn’t reply.
***
7
There, my darling. Do you feel my touch? Do you feel my love?”
Crispin Miller’s hand trembled as it moved over Heather Monaghan’s soft linen night dress, his fingers tracing small circles on the milky white skin of her exposed sternum, before nestling under the gown’s neckline and cupping her small breast.
“I love you so much,” Crispin whispered into her ear, his fingers stroking the pert nipple of her left breast; a nipple that was not so much stiff and erect in response to his adept touch, as the fact that Heather Monaghan had been as dead as a nail since the day Crispin Miller had first met her.
She wasn’t as beautiful then as she was now, of course. Then she had been damaged, the result of soft, yielding tissue meeting the harsh plastic of a dash board at sixty miles per hour. Her death had been as instant as his love for her, when he saw the photograph Heather’s grief-stricken husband had brought into Miller’s Funeral Home Ltd several days ago.
Mr. Monaghan was wheel-chair bound; an added penance for driving slightly over the limit on the night of the accident that turned his good natured, fun loving spouse into the rag doll that had hit the windshield with such force twenty of her teeth had exploded. Monaghan’s melancholy - his guilt - was a palpable entity, and he wore his grief like fragile armour.
“Make my lass handsome again,” Monaghan had wept, handing Miller a 4x4 glossy picture of his very beautiful, very dead wife.
It was a portrait, taken during better times; times when she’d been living and breathing and enjoying what life often gave those who embraced it without question. Heather was facing camera, her green eyes framed by doe-lashes, her smile accentuated by white teeth and her skin, flawless porcelain.
Oh yes, Heather Monaghan was a sight to behold, but when the linen covers were thrown back revealing her ballooned black and blue face and eyes pulled into slits by terrible, swollen eyelids, lesser men would have wept along with her grieving spouse.
But Crispin Miller could see beyond the dreadful wounds. He had seen Heather’s potential, vowing to give her back her beauty.
And enjoy a few intimate moments along the way.
Crispin was used to his oddness. When he questioned it (which wasn’t that often) he used the cliché that the blame lay with his parents.
Miller’s mother and father were in their late forties when he came along. As the only son of older parents, his values were often traditional and by default obsolete. This was to become worse when Miller was six years old and his father died of a stroke. His mother’s grief morphed into over protection and dependence. In Georgina Miller’s need for emotional equilibrium, she blunted her son’s emotional and social development
As such, he was always targeted by the local dimwits. His mother laughed off his complaints telling him it would be God’s retribution that such people would ultimately face.
His earliest recollection of bullies was running headlong through a wood in an attempt to evade the three boys who wanted to pass some time by kicking the shit out of him. The memory was still very clear. Because it was the same afternoon that Crispin Miller became fascinated with death.
In those woods, he’d stumbled and fallen, just missing the carcass of a dead badger. It had been there a while, its snout frozen in an endless grimace, its paws pulled taut by rigor mortis. There was little sign as to why the animal lay dead in the wood; there wasn’t any blood or indication of trauma. But the serenity he found in the scene would stay with him for the rest of his life, and somewhere along the way Miller lost the ability to differentiate the desire for life over death.
He was an awkward child, an outsider and as such his relationships with others were often superficial, if they existed at all. Where there were opportunities, Georgina Miller would snuff them out lest it lead to her son leaving her alone. Should Crispin attract any female attention, his mother would place little doubts in his mind.
“Careful, Crispin, that one’s got her eye on you!”
And she would follow this with stories of how no matter how much time, how much love you gave out, people would always leave you alone and desperate in the end.. By the time he went to college, this had become Crispin’s doctrine.
With no inclination to forge relationships, Crispin’s real passion was sculpture, and in his hands clay was under his command. He excelled at creating figures frozen in time, burlesque images of those he often revered but found, in reality, difficult to connect with. All he needed was a photograph, and this is what he often did. But being caught taking clandestine photographs of young women didn’t go down too well at Art College. People just didn’t understand his rationale, not helped by his aloof nature. And after a while he gave up trying, accepting his expulsion as another example of how the world had failed him.
He bummed around for a few years until the death of his mother gave rise to a chance meeting and a subsequent new sense of direction.
He was devastated at her death, this being another reminder at how people always bailed out in the end. It was a skewed view, born from selfish ends, but with no other perspective, Miller lived by its injunction.
Miller had spoken with George Hedges, the funeral director, to fill in the awkward silences often associated with funeral parlors; where grief and remorse ferment with the sickly stench of funeral wreaths. He spoke of loss and his desire to rebuild life from death and Hedges, a reedy man with a kind demeanor that extended beyond his fee, smiled and asked Crispin how he intended to do such a thing.
So Miller told the funeral director of his talent for sculpture, and the potential to marry his skills and the funeral trade began to take shape as easily as a piece of inert clay under Miller’s deft finger tips.
Under Hedge’s tuition, Miller learned the trade. When he saw his first corpse - that of a woman in her mid-thirties who had come off second best when she collided with a garbage truck - this fledgling mortician was overcome with the same sense of peace that had befallen him in the wood near his home, all those years ago. And from that point on, Miller fell in love with death.
It was only a matter of time before this was to develop into something far more sinister.
Mr. Hedges passed away two years ago, but not before imparting his wisdom and knowledge, and Miller had set up his own establishment with his old mentor’s endorsement.
Now Miller was alone with another creation, another lover upon which to lavish his affections. Heather had been painstakingly rebuilt, crafted into the beautiful creature she was in life.
Miller had positioned her in his office, sitting at a table, the flowing nightdress she wore belonged to his mother. Sometimes he wore it himself, on the anniversary of his mother’s death: just to honour her memory.
Miller increased the urgency in his hand, his delicate fingers squeezing Heather’s cold, embalmed breast, feeling her nipple against his palm.
‘You’re so beautiful, my sweet,’ Miller breathed as his free hand unzipped his trousers and fondled himself. He longed to look into her eyes, but the glass wasn’t quite good enough and the illusion would be spoilt, and Miller would not be able to maintain his perverse fantasy.
His breath was fast and heavy, and he rested his cheek on Heather’s firm shoulder calling her name over and over until he came hot and wet against her hip.
The usual emotions followed the release, ecstasy, and the pangs of guilt and self loathing; the latter squashed under a heavy layer of faux, distorted conviction. And just to make sure such notions remained buried, Miller covered Heather with the table cloth, turning her into a gingham ghost, sitting at the now bare office table.
After a few moments, his mind turned to his final job of the evening: the embalming of Mr. Charles Richardson, ready for his long walk in the morning. It was an hour’s work, draining the body of blood and replacing it with formaldehyde solution. Then he would pay his Heather another visit, where the love making would become more intimate.
Miller went through to the preparation room, where Mr. Richardson lay, covered with a plain white sheet.
“Hope we weren’t too noisy, Charles,” Miller said cheerily. “She’s a little vixen, that one!”
Charles Richardson moaned in response.
Miller froze, his mind immediately telling him that a dead person could not possibly do such a thing. Just like a dead person couldn’t bring a gnarled hand out from underneath the crisp sheet and begin clawing at the material until it fell upon the tiled floor with a whispering hiss.
And then, as Charles Richardson sat upright, naked and exposing the livid purple, post mortem “Y” carved into his chest and abdomen, there could be no denial. Richardson’s mouth opened and his dentures collapsed with a loud click. The cry that came from his long dead vocal cords was low and pitiful and his neck creaked as it turned, jerking like some malfunctioning robot in a ropey 50’s sci-fi movie.
As Richardson brought his eyes to bear, Crispin Miller wet his pants. He wasn’t aware of it, he just wished that he’d finished the embalming process and removed those eyes.
Miller backed away as the reanimated corpse slid its legs over the side of the surgical table, inched forwards and then planted both feet on the floor. As he stood, Richardson’s innards could be heard slopping around in his abdomen.
Gravity always wins.
Miller fell back into his office as Richardson began lurching towards him. Slamming the door, the undertaker fumbled with the key in the lock, turning it with such force the shaft snapped in the tumbler. Then he drew the deadbolt across the top and bottom of the door.
Richardson could be heard outside, slapping twin palms against the other side of the door. Miller continued to stare incredulously at the two inch thick barrier keeping him safe from his unlikely assailant.
How was this possible? Was this his penance for his kind of love? God’s retribution, just as mother had said?
So many questions, but they were all cut short by a sudden small noise behind him.
The sound of movement. The sound of material slipping onto the floor.
A gingham table cloth for instance.
Miller turned slowly, his heart pumping, the muscles of his arms and legs shivering and reluctant.
He shouldn’t have been surprised to see Heather Monaghan standing and facing away from him, her hair tied up exposing the nape of her exquisite, delicate neck. But he allowed a gasp of pure horror to escape from his lips, and her head jolted towards the sound, the sudden movement dislodging one of her prosthetic eyes; launching it across the table where it bounced against the far wall before skittering across the plush carpet to stop at his feet.
Crispin heard the voice of his mother reaching out to him from a dim, dark past. “Careful, Crispin; this one’s got her eye on you!”
Miller began to giggle, and as Heather came to him, her arms outstretched, her hands searching, his giggle turned into laughter; uncontrollable, belly-aching laughter.
From behind the door Richardson beat a frenzied tattoo upon the wood.
Miller doubled over, helpless and Heather fell upon him, her mind focused on nothing but her lust to sate the terrible eternal hunger in her belly; her strength, easily subduing Miller once the hysteria gave way to pain.
She gorged on him, ripping open his throat with ease, biting off the fingers that had first lovingly re-created her, and then violently violated her at a time of vulnerability, just to sate base need.
Had Heather not lost the ability to engage in abstract thinking, she may have enjoyed the irony that tables had been turned; that Crispin Miller was now an object of her desires.
She would enjoy him as much as he’d enjoyed her. And contrary to Marcia Miller’s doctrine, Heather Monaghan wasn’t planning on leaving Crispin alone any time soon.
He had far too much to offer.
***