Halfhead

24

The last sliver of daylight disappeared into the low clouds, leaving the city to the night and the rain. Standing on oppos ite sides of a mortuary slab, Assistant Section Director William Hunter and Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron tried to make small talk. Brian had been as good as his word, talking Jo into taking the trip back to the mortuary with the bodies, and then buggering off out of it.

‘Look,’ said Will when they finally ran out of things to say about the crappy weather, ‘I’m sorry about what happened yesterday.’

‘Yeah, well, my getting bashed over the head wasn’t your fault.’

‘I didn’t meant that-I’m sorry about behaving like an arse.’

Jo didn’t say anything and neither did the trussed-up corpse of PC Sandy Douglas.

‘When you asked about Janet I…I didn’t know what…I reacted badly: got defensive. I’m sorry.’

She nodded.

‘Janet…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Janet died six and a half years ago. We’d been married four years. I was looking for a guy who’d already killed seven people. He liked to use a Thrummer-not like Mitchell-Alistair Middleton’s speciality was the human heart. He used to boil the…’ Will closed his eyes and tried again, ‘He used to boil his way into their chests and hold onto their hearts till they stopped beating.’

‘He…he phoned my office, pretended to be a witness in another case. I used to have this big picture of Janet and me on the wall, and he saw it. I didn’t know who he was. I just talked to him like he was a normal person and all the time he’s staring over my shoulder at Janet’s picture.’

Will grabbed the edge of the post-mortem table. ‘Three hours later I got another call: it was Janet. She wanted to know if I could bring a plastic of wine home with me, something fizzy. Said she had something special to tell me. She…’ He cleared his throat, gripping the table so tightly his knuckles were turning white. ‘The doorbell goes and she says, “Hold on, I’ll just be a minute.” And that’s when I saw him again. Alastair Middleton, the man I’d spoken to on the phone. He was in my house with a big bunch of flowers for my wife. And she’s smiling as she invites him in. I can see them talking and then he just punches her in the face.’

‘Oh God, Will.’ Jo reached over the dead Bluecoat and took Will’s hand.

‘I shouted at him, tried to get him to stop, but he kept on hitting her and hitting her.’ Will shuddered. ‘I told Control to get a pickup team over there, but there wasn’t time…He…She was wearing this Fair Isle sweater I’d bought her for her birthday and I watched him boil it away. And all the time he’s singing, “Hush little baby don’t say a word…”’

‘Will, I’m so sorry.’

‘So am I.’ He took a deep, ragged breath and straightened himself up. ‘I miss her…but I’ve been alone for six and a half years. I really like you; you’re bright, sexy, colourful.’ He managed a smile. ‘And I’m not just talking about the suits.’

Her hand left his, travelling up to rest on his cheek. ‘Listen, buster, I only wear them for work, OK?’

She leant forward slightly-reaching over PC Sandy Douglas’s corpse, still done up in its parcel-tape bundle-and pulled Will’s face towards her.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Maybe I’ll tell you later,’ she said, as their lips met above the mortuary slab. ‘But only if you’re very, very good.’

She sits alone in the bedroom, trying to ignore Stephen’s wife’s whimpering. Honestly, just because she’s about to be tortured to death, there’s no need to make all this racket!

The gag isn’t working-too much noise leaks out. Perhaps it would be best to just kill the woman and get it over with?

Dr Westfield smiles at the thought and runs the brush through her hair again, making it shine like molten gold. The skinpaint holding her new face together has cured perfectly, you can barely see the joins. And even those pale pink lines will fade over time. Soon she’ll be perfect again. The bruises are fading and so is the swelling. The skin is soft and smooth, free from the mark of age. No more crow’s feet, or laughter lines. She looks eighteen again.

One last brush and she admires her long blonde hair in the mirror. She’s beautiful. When she was younger she always hated her nose. But now it gives her face character. It’s not big, it’s proud. Her chin isn’t wide, it’s strong. Appropriate for who she’s become. Stephen really was a brilliant surgeon.

She comes to a decision: as a tribute to his skill she won’t slit his wife open and strangle her with her own intestines. Mrs Bexley will get to die of dehydration instead. Yes, it’s slow and painful, but a lot more dignified. Never let it be said that Dr Fiona Westfield couldn’t be merciful.

Even if the bitch does make one hell of a racket.

Dr Westfield closes the bedroom door, shutting out the muffled sobs. She needs silence to plan her next move.

All this time she’s been obsessing about the man who caught her, but William Hunter is only part of the picture. He discovered her crimes by accident. If Alastair Middleton had called someone else that afternoon-if he hadn’t killed the Network man’s wife-he might never have been arrested and ‘interrogated’. He wouldn’t have told them all about his special therapy sessions, and William Hunter wouldn’t have come after her.

It was an accident. A twist of fate. Nothing more.

But Peitai and Kikan are a different matter entirely. There was nothing random about what they did to her. If she concentrates hard she can still smell the interrogation room: old leather and bitter-almond aftershave.

Yes, William Hunter was the one who caught her, who built the case against her, who made sure she went into mutilated slavery, but he’s not solely to blame. He’ll still have to suffer, but he’ll have company on the way.

Peitai and Kikan. Peitai and Kikan. They stole her children, tortured her for information: interfered with her research. They didn’t see the skill involved, the artistry needed to take a perfectly normal person and turn him into something that wouldn’t think twice about killing a total stranger, cutting a hole in their stomach, and fucking the corpse.

She was creating masterpieces; all Peitai and Kikan wanted was mass-produced killers.

Philistines.

She’ll pay Mr Hunter a visit tonight and then, while he’s still got a mouth to scream with, she’ll ask him where to find the old man and his weasely sidekick.

She’ll show them what it feels like to have six years of their lives ripped away. One painful slice at a time.

He didn’t think the rain could get any heavier, but it did, obliterating the city beyond, hiding it in the angry roar of suicidal water drops.

Will took a sip of whisky, looking out through the patio doors at the downpour, but not really seeing it.

‘Thought you were coming to bed?’ Jo stood in the middle of the lounge, hands on hips, buck-naked.

‘Hmm? Sorry: miles away.’

‘Are you always this damn moody, Will? Only I’d like to know before I get too deep into this thing.’

He managed to crack a smile. ‘Normally I’m a lot worse.’ He planted a soft kiss on the nape of her neck. ‘You ask Brian.’

‘I did. He told me some cock and bull story about you being this big, all-conquering, sensitive hero type. Whatever you pay him to talk you up, you’re getting value for money.’ She plonked herself down on the edge of the settee. ‘So why all the brooding?’

‘I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately.’

She blew a raspberry. ‘Strike one! Try again.’

‘We…I mean Brian, George and I, have been investigating that bloke I told you about yesterday.’

‘What Petty?’

‘Peitai, yes. He’s running some sort of experiment up at Sherman House; they’ve got a drug that gives people VR syndrome. He’s been testing it on the inhabitants.’

‘Holy shit! You’re kidding!’

Will shook his head. ‘We had evidence. The bodies you saw in the mortuary, tissue samples from their brains, SOC recordings of the flats at Sherman House. But it’s all gone.’ He took another sip of whisky. ‘Lab lost the samples, Ser vices destroyed the wrong bodies, and George called back to say maintenance had a little ‘accident’ this afternoon: they erased all the recordings we had.’

‘Cover-up?’

‘I told Director Smith-Hamilton about the evidence we had against Ken Peitai and his boss, and six hours later it disappeared. She even stopped the team I had going through the PsychTech files: confiscated the data. Governor Clark’s been on her case all week, so as far as she’s concerned none of this ever happened.’

Jo stood and wrapped her arms round his neck ‘You want to bring him down?’

‘It’s not just him. Clark’s an arsehole, a mouth for hire. Someone’s pulling his strings. Someone who doesn’t worry about threatening a Network Director.’ Will closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. ‘And I don’t have any evidence. They destroyed it all.’

‘You listen to me, Will Hunter.’ Jo stepped back and held his head in her hands, forcing him to look her in the eyes. ‘There is no bastard in this world well-connected enough to get away from us! If Ken Petty wants a fight I will kick his scaly arse from here to Inverness. You want to bring them down? We’ll bring them down. Those sons of bitches don’t stand a fucking chance.’

He smiled. She had a lot of guts. And her nipples went all pointy when she was angry. ‘Such language from a young lady.’

‘Ah, you love it when I talk dirty.’ She pulled him down towards her and for the next two hours he forgot all about Ken Peitai and Sherman House.

She stands at the apartment window, watching Glasgow sparkle in the night rain. She loves this city more than any other. It held her to it’s bosom, allowed her to feed off its inhabitants for nearly a dozen years and never once complained.

Peitai and Kikan…Definitely a challenge. Hunter will be easy enough-she got his home address from the hospital files. All she has to do is turn up at his home tonight, and introduce him to a little home surgery. Peitai and Kikan will be a lot harder to track down. Even if William Hunter knows where they are, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to get at them.

Still, that’s a problem for tomorrow; tonight is a night for fun! And knives.

There’s a row of blades laid out on the kitchen work surface, all nice and sharp and shiny. She spends a happy five minutes picking the ones for tonight. In the end a paring knife, three scalpels, and a small portable triage wand go into her pack, along with halfheading sedatives, four tubes of skinglue, and a plastic of good wine. It would be rude to visit and not bring something.

Mrs Bexley is quiet for once, sitting there strapped to the chair.

‘Now, I want you to behave yourself when I’m out, OK?’ Dr Westfield’s voice is still a little gruff, but it’s getting better all the time.

She ruffles Mrs Bexley’s hair-the woman screws her eyes shut and flinches, breath hissing in and out of her nose. Terrified.

Westfield smiles. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’

The woman nods, tears spilling down her cheeks.

‘Good.’ Westfield pulls on the brand-new cloat she bought from a very expensive boutique this afternoon. Armani. Very stylish. She’s almost out the front door when she remembers the Palm Zapper she picked up at the hospital. Tonight is a night for fun and knives, but a Zapper set on low can do some interesting things when applied to the right parts of the human anatomy. Interesting and very painful.

Out on the streets there are still signs of life, even thought it’s half past one in the morning and there’s a monsoon in progress. Clubbers run between sheltered spots, or just plod on through the downpour, eating chips and cloned kebab meat. Some drunk, some high, some looking for a fight, some looking for love. She could take a dozen home with her and bathe in their blood, and no one would even notice.

Crossing Glebe Street, she descends a slippery flight of stairs to the local shuttle station and takes the next car going west. It’ll be a shame to leave this beautiful city, but when the bodies start showing up again people will talk. So she’ll just have to start again somewhere new-somewhere they don’t know her modus operandi-but she will miss Glasgow so much.

As the shuttle car arrives at the platform, she sees her face reflected in the curved plexiglass window. It’s the face of someone who has earned a little fun. A little revenge.

In the dark bedroom, Will tried to identify the noise that had jerked him awake. The flat’s heating popped and pinged away gently to itself; the ever-present hum of the control panel; Jo, breathing deeply beside him, the duvet wound round her like a boa constrictor…He lay still, holding his breath, straining to hear it again.

Silence.

Probably just the rain, or the fridge, or the idiot downstairs.

But now he was awake Will knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep until he’d looked in each and every room to make sure there weren’t any bogymen hiding in the closet. Quietly, he slid out from under the covers and into his bathrobe. His Palm Thrummer was hanging in its holster, draped over the end of the bed, and he pulled the metal tube free, twisting it open. It came alive beneath his fingers, the batteries ready to turn whatever it was pointed at into a cloud of ionized dust.

Will hesitated at the bedroom door. Someone was out there, he was certain of it. Heart pounding, he twisted the doorknob and inched out into the lounge. The large patio windows were partially covered, the blinds three-quarters drawn, letting the city’s sodium glow trickle into the room. The dead yellow light only seemed to make things darker, turning the shadows into solid things.

Padding through the lounge he made straight for the kitchen. It was empty, the study too. The guest bedroom hadn’t been used for eight years, not since Janet’s father had come to visit them the year he died. Will opened all the closets, but didn’t find any skeletons he didn’t already know about. And yet he was certain there was someone…

It wasn’t loud, little more than a dull scrape, plastic on plastic.

Creeping out of the spare room Will stood staring back towards the front door. Light seeped in through the gap between the door and the floor. There were shadows moving out there in the corridor, outside his flat.

The soft scraping sound came again and he heard a small bleep. Tiny and discreet. The sound of his front door lock disconnecting.

Quietly he backed into the bedroom, pulling the door almost shut behind him. Someone was breaking into his apartment in the dead of night and he was pretty damn sure it wasn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Peitai. The little git had used Governor Clark to lean on Director Smith-Hamilton, but it looked as if Will was about to get something a lot more permanent.

He settled back against the wall, cursing under his breath. An assault team was the last thing he wanted in his home at quarter to two on a Tuesday morning. They’d have light-sights, they’d have infrared, they’d have Zappers, Screamers, Whompers, and God knew what else. All he had was a Palm Thrummer…and Detective Sergeant Cameron.

With one hand he grabbed the duvet and dragged it off the bed. Before Jo could start swearing he slapped the same hand over her mouth and pointed at the bedroom door with his Thrummer. She scowled up at him in the gloom, and then another clunk came from somewhere inside the flat. Her eyebrows shot up.

Will let go of her, put a finger to his lips, and went, ‘Shh…’

She mouthed the word, ‘Fuck,’ then scrabbled through her discarded clothes.

Will clicked his throat-mike and activated the emergency channel. ‘Control, this is Hunter: do you copy?’ he whispered, stuffing the earpiece into place.

‘Sir?’

‘I need a pickup team here and I need it now.’

‘Sir?’

‘Just do it!’

‘Sir, all our teams are out on-’

‘I don’t care if you have to call in your sick granny! Reserves, anything! Just get them-’ Will’s earpiece exploded into a barrage of static and he dragged it out.

Jo whispered, ‘How we doing?’ She was stark naked, holding a brand-new Field Zapper. The thing was three times the size of her original sidearm, the telltales casting a soft blue glow over her caramel skin. She caught him looking and shrugged. ‘What? Thought if I was going to hang around with you I’d better pack a bit more firepower.’

‘They’re jamming the coms channels. We’re on our own: nothing in, nothing out.’

She swore quietly. ‘How many?’

‘Couldn’t tell.’ Will cranked his Palm Thrummer up to full. ‘At least four.’

‘So what’s taking them so long?’

‘How the hell should I…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. Get a little tense when people are trying to kill me.’

They sat side by side in the dark, both weapons pointing at the partially open door.

‘Maybe they’re doing a room to room search?’

Will shook his head. ‘If they’ve got infrared goggles they can see our heat signatures. They don’t need to search.’

‘What if they’re on low-light?’

Will opened his mouth to say: ‘Don’t be daft’, but it would explain why they hadn’t just charged straight into the bedroom. A smile tugged at his face. If they were using light-amplification goggles, they were in for a nasty surprise.

He crept towards the bedroom door, keeping close to the wall. ‘Cover your eyes and get ready to run.’

Outside, in the lounge, he could hear soft, careful footsteps. They were getting closer.

Will risked a glance through the slit between the door and the frame, into the living room beyond. A strange-looking creature with goggles over its eyes looked straight back at him. In the split second it took them to recognize each other Will took in the troop boots, the vid-helmet, the heavy gloves and the full-sized Thrummer.

He closed his eyes and shouted, ‘Lights!’

Suddenly the entire apartment exploded into brilliant daylight-he could see pink through his eyelids-and then the flat was full of swearing.

‘Lights off!’ He grabbed Jo’s hand and charged out through the bedroom door.

Will’s night vision was still good as he barged into the trooper with the Thrummer and sent him flying. The man smashed through the coffee table, hands clasped to his goggled eyes, blinded by the sudden brilliance. The room was full of them, staggering around clutching their heads. Will ran for the front door, Jo hot on his heels.

She snapped her Field Zapper up and sent a blue arc of lighting into the chest of the nearest invader. He screamed and flew backwards as every muscle in his body contracted, sparking like a Catherine wheel into the control panel. The Whomper in his hands barked and something red and wet sprayed across Will’s cheek. He turned, just in time to see a man in combat gear, with a shark-sized bite out of his torso, twitch and judder to the floor.

Will didn’t stop at the front door, just ran straight through, shouting, ‘Lights!’ again as he crossed the threshold. He could hear swearing erupt for a second time as he and Jo sprinted for the lifts.

She was spray-painted raspberry red all down one side. Naked or not, it wasn’t an erotic sight.

They skidded to a halt at the end of the corridor. Will punched the button for the lifts. It bleeped back at him and the doors slid open, revealing a startled-looking woman in combat fatigues, her Thrummer unhitched and resting against her foot.

‘Shite!’ Jo shot her in the face with the Field Zapper.

The trooper’s head crackled with hot blue sparks and a deafening roar filled the lift as the Thrummer went off, taking the woman’s left foot and a chunk of flooring with it.

‘Will you stop doing that!’ Will leapt into the lift. It was full of pink mist that smelled of raw meat and roasting ozone. Hot red blood pumped from the woman’s truncated leg, spreading out in a slippery puddle, dripping through the hole in the floor. Fifty-seven stories straight down.

‘Stop complaining and get us out of here!’ Jo dropped to her knees and wrenched the Thrummer from the unconscious trooper’s hand.

Will pressed the button for the building’s shuttle bay and sank back against the cool mirrored wall as the doors slid shut and the car started to accelerate downwards.

Jo wrestled the crash webbing off the twitching body in the middle of the floor. ‘You see how many?’

‘Seven that I counted, plus this one. Standard pickup team is ten, not including the pilot. My guess is there’s another two covering the exits.’

‘Catch.’ She threw the webbing at him and he fastened it over his dressing gown, twisting it round the right way so the spare power cells for the Thrummer were easy to get at. When he was all buckled up she passed across the assault rifle and then laughed at him. ‘What do you look like?’

‘At least I’m wearing something!’

‘True.’ Jo unsnipped the catches on the front of the woman’s jumpsuit and sat her up, pulling the limp arms out of the sleeves. ‘How much longer?’ she asked, trying to drag the jumpsuit’s one remaining leg over the trooper’s heavy boots.

‘Thirteen floors.’ They were already decelerating.

‘Damn!’

‘Ten, nine, eight, seven-’

‘I can’t get the bastard thing over her bloody boot!’

‘Two, one.’

The lift went ‘ping’ and Will braced himself against the back wall, Thrummer pointing at the twin doors. As they gently slid apart Will looked out through the opening gap into the shuttle bay. Two men were standing on the platform-one carrying a Whomper, the other a Screamer, both weapons pointed in his direction.

Will didn’t wait for introductions, just jammed his thumb down on his Thrummer’s trigger, tearing a hole in the lift doors at chest height. The two men dived for cover as he held the button down, filling the air with vaporized metal and the sound of tortured bees. He slapped the control panel with his other hand and sent the elevator back up to the ground floor, the lift shaft clearly visible through the new four-foot hole in the doors.

‘Got it!’ Jo stood, a blood-soaked, tattered jumpsuit in her hands. She managed to get one leg into it before the elevator juddered to a halt and Will shoved her out into the building foyer.

‘What the hell was that for?’ She staggered against the wall as, behind them, the floor of the lift exploded upward. The unconscious body of the one-legged trooper jerked as round after round tore into it. ‘Ah, got you.’

Mr Duncan, the building’s night porter, came scuttling round from behind his brass and marblette fortress.

‘Fit’i hell’s ga’in oan?’

‘Get back behind your desk and keep your head down!’ Will ran for the front entrance, pulling Jo along behind him. ‘And call for help!’

They burst out into the street and the rain.

Jo struggled her arms into the jumpsuit. ‘Which way?’

‘There.’ He pointed across the street to the path that led away into the darkest depths of Kelvingrove Park. ‘We go anywhere else and people are going to get hurt.’

‘Trust me,’ she said, running after him through the park gates, ‘those bastards come anywhere near me, people are going to get hurt.’

Will was already soaked to the skin, his bathrobe flapping out behind him like a towelling cape. The Thrummer in his hands still had a good two-thirds charge left and he had another pair of power cells strapped to the webbing. If they could find some decent cover they might actually get out of this alive.

They hammered, barefoot, down the path, between hissing yellow orbs of light, setting off holo adverts as they passed. Will tried his throat-mike again.

‘Control, do you read me?’

The response was garbled-small spurts of words interspersed with waves of hard, white noise.

‘Anything?’ Jo was breathing hard now and so was he.

‘Jammer’s breaking up the signal. Backup might be on the way, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take.’

He looked back over his shoulder, just in time to see seven heavily armed troopers explode out of the front door of the building and screech to a stop on the pavement. For a moment it looked as though they might have got away with it…but one of the figures must have seen the chain of glowing adverts Will and Jo had left in their wake, because he pointed straight at them.

‘Bastard! We’ve got to hide.’ Jo grabbed a handful of Will’s soaking dressing gown and ran off at ninety degrees to the path, dragging him into the darkness.

Cold, slippery grass whipped at their shins, the rain and the night swiftly gobbling up the sodiums’ feeble glow. There wasn’t enough light to see his hand in front of his face, let alone where he was going. Will went down hard, twisting his ankle and slithering to a halt in the mud beneath a sharp-edged bush.

From his skewed vantage point he could see the assault team charging along the path like polished beetles, the sodium light glinting off their wet body armour.

‘Will?’

‘Shhh!’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Get out of here. I’ll hold them back.’

‘Bollocks you will.’ She dropped down next to him in the mud.

‘We stand a much better chance if we split up.’

She shook her head, but Will reached out and held her face in his hands. ‘You need to go. You need to get as far away from here as possible.’

‘I’m not leaving-’

‘No you’re not. We’re just splitting up, that’s all. Making it more difficult for them to find us.’ His ankle was killing him: he was going nowhere fast and he knew it. ‘Once you’re out of the park, get on the nearest shuttle and go anywhere. Soon as you’re out of jammer range, call control and get a pickup team out here.’

‘I-’

Will pulled her down to him and placed a soft kiss on her lips.

‘Over there!’ The shout was followed by the high-pitched whine of a Whomper on full. It barked, blasting a chunk of waterlogged turf into muddy rain right in front of them.

‘Go!’

Jo didn’t need another telling; she picked herself up and charged off into the bushes.

Will pulled the Thrummer up and flicked on the light-sight. Its hard green line streaked out from under the bush, into the middle of the shouting trooper’s chest. Will pressed the trigger and the man’s torso evaporated. Four troopers watched, mesmerized, as the man’s shoulders slumped into his hips, before the whole grisly mess slapped into the path in a mist of red. When the green targeting beam leapt to the next one in line they hit the deck hard. But not before Will got off a second shot. The Thrummer growled and someone lost everything between their left elbow and their spine. The survivors scrabbled to their feet and ran for it, doing their best to get the hell out of there before Will fired again.

He picked one at random and stripped the skin off their back before the weapon chimed empty in his hands.

‘Three out of seven. Not bad for a half-naked man in a bathrobe.’ Will racked the Thrummer upright and shot the battery pack out into the mud. He could hear them crashing through the bushes on either side, trying to outflank him while he reloaded. With a grim smile he slapped the next power cell into the slot and cranked it up to speed. The telltales danced along the body of the weapon as the tines began vibrating inside.

The night lit up with a blue flash. Over to his left a bush was torn apart into its component molecules, the fragments of chlorophyll swept away in the torrential downpour. He took a guess at the source and swept the area with his Thrummer. Undergrowth leapt into the air, crackling with static electricity. The weapon’s roar filled his ears, shaking the teeth in his head as he swung it back and forth, decimating anything in its path. It was deafening.

He didn’t hear them coming up behind him until they were almost on top of him.

Will span round, the Thrummer coming with him, tearing its way through shrubs and earth, his finger still hard on the trigger. The first one into the clearing caught the weapon’s wake full in the face. His body ran on another step before it realized there was nothing giving the orders anymore and went down, fountaining arterial crimson into the rain-battered grass. The second trooper dived in beneath the Thrummer’s arc and slammed into Will’s chest, sending him sprawling into the bloody mud.

Something hard crashed into the side of his head, snapping it around. Hot yellow blobs filled his vision. The world span. And then someone clambered on top of him, straddling him, locking his arms against his sides, pushing him down into the quagmire. Pain burst across his scalp as the woman grabbed a handful of hair and forced his head back. Her fist hammered into Will’s nose, sending warm salty blood pouring down his throat. The next blow closed his left eye, smashing his head further into the mud.

He tried to heave the bastard off, but her weight was solid, pinning him, immobile.

The fist caught Will’s left cheek and he heard, with surprising clarity, a muffled ‘pop’ as the bone broke.

Will’s hands scrabbled in the mud, looking for something, anything to fight back with. His fingers brushed against a boot-the other trooper, the one with no head.

The fist hammered down again. Pain cracked through Will’s mouth as teeth snapped. He retched, blood exploding from his split lips.

A voice above him shouted, ‘Gah! You filthy fucker!’

Another punch.

Will grabbed the boot, working his hand around. Boot knife: please God let there be a…Bingo. He fumbled with the strap holding the knife inside its sheath. The handle was cool beneath his fingers as he slid the blade free. Head swimming.

Difficult to think.

Dizzy.

Darkness…

Someone was yelling at him, bellowing into his battered face, dragging him back to consciousness. He saw, through his one good eye, the woman on top of him curl her fist back again. Will rammed the boot knife into the back of her ankle and twisted till he could feel the hamstring snap.

A scream. The weight fell away. She rolled in the mud, clutching at the knife sticking out of the back of her leg.

‘You bastard! My fucking leg! You bastard! Agghh Jesus!’

Will rolled onto his side and vomited blood, bitter and salty. The roaring in his head came in waves, fading the world in and out, in and out.

‘You fucking bastard!’

He tried to move, but nothing worked. All he could do was lie there as the trooper struggled to her knees and dragged his fallen Thrummer out of the mud. Her face was pale, teeth gritted, eyes angry, dark slits, but there was no mistaking her. The first time they’d met she’d been wearing tribal scars and eclectic rags. The second time she’d been wearing casual clothing and talking to a man in a long black cloat. Big-boned rather than fat. Her ginger hair hidden beneath a combat helmet.

‘Fuck orders, you’re fucking dead!’

The telltales danced along the sides of the assault rifle, and a hard blue crackle filled the air. The lightning caught her square in the chest and Will felt the harsh roar of the Thrummer as all her muscles contracted involuntarily. Blue sparks fizzled out across her rigid body and then, with a wet splatch, she keeled over into the mud.

Will wanted to laugh, but all that came out was a rasping gurgle and one of his back teeth. Still alive. He lay there, bleeding into the rain-soaked earth. Then quietly slipped into unconsciousness.