Halfhead

4

High above the streets lazy, golden clouds drifted slowly westward. A pair of Scrubbers floated in the stale air: huge rusty metal shapes, dripping condensation from their swimming-pool-sized filtration units onto the buildings below, where it evaporated as soon as it hit the hot concrete. The advertising hoardings bolted to the Scrubbers’ sides juddered, the pictures out of sync; misaligned and fuzzy. What was the point of fixing them? No one looked up any more.

If anyone had, they’d have seen a Network Dragonfly jinking past the out-of-focus displays, heading for the south side of the city. Half a mile out it dropped to street level and banked right, roaring between the huge connurb blocks.

And there was Monstrosity Square: dead ahead.

Will watched it growing on his monitor. Calm. Stay calm. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Nothing to worry about. Everything was going to be fine. They were OK this morning, weren’t they? In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

In the next bay, Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron lolled against her harness, fiddling with the Thrummer she’d borrowed from the armoury. She was whistling to herself, something cheery and upbeat that Will could almost recognize over the Dragonfly’s engines. She didn’t look worried about going back to Sherman House, but then she hadn’t been there eleven years ago. She’d been too young. She’d been lucky.

Will unclipped his Whomper from the recharging rack and checked the battery for about the twentieth time: still fully charged.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

‘Right, listen up, campers.’ Lieutenant Brand’s voice was curt and businesslike. ‘They’ve already had two visits from the Network this week; chances are they’ll be getting restless. So keep it tight! I do not want this turning into another episode of “Everyone Gets Their Arse Shot Off”. Understood?’

The trooper in the bay opposite crossed himself as he and his colleagues barked, ‘Ma’am, yes, ma’am!’

‘Good. ETA: forty-five seconds. Buckle up, people, it’s going to be sudden.’

At the last moment the Dragonfly leapt, twisting almost vertically to climb the side of Sherman House. Jo shrieked and laughed; Will closed his eyes and tried not to throw up. As the gunship fishtailed to a halt on the building’s roof, he released his death grip on the supports and unsnapped his safety harness, watching as the bays around him erupted into life.

‘First team: GO!’

The rear ramp swung open, exposing the rooftop in all its tatty glory. When the connurb blocks were new this was all lush, vibrant gardens, arranged around the building’s central well. Twisting paths for romantic walks, picnic areas, and sports facilities. Now it was an unkempt jungle, punctuated by the blackened circles of forgotten bonfires. Drifts of rubbish slouched in every corner like dirty, lumpy snow, and here and there, the tumbledown ruins of community buildings were visible through tangled rhododendrons and brittle brown ivy, their walls crumbling and vandalized.

The first team sprinted out into the undergrowth, searching for an entrance to the lower floors.

Huddled in the safety of the drop bay Will looked out on the blocks that made up the other three corners of Monstrosity Square. Two hundred and forty thousand people were crammed into these four huge, ugly buildings. No jobs, no hope and no future.

No wonder they’d all gone crazy.

From here, sixty storeys above the roasting streets, Glasgow was laid out like a vast, concrete cancer. It stretched in every direction, further than the eye could see, grey and dirt brown, sweltering in the evening light. Home sweet home.

A voice sounded in his ear, making Will jump: ‘Entryway is secure.’

The second team burst out of the Dragonfly, taking up positions. And then Beaton and Stein lumbered after them, dragging the bulky scanning equipment through the scrub. The bashed and dented canister trundled along on tiny wheels that quickly became ensnared in the yellow grass. They swore and cursed all the way. Amazingly their grasp of the profane was nowhere near as comprehensive or inventive as DS Jo Cameron’s.

Will checked his Whomper’s battery one last time, then stepped into the sweltering afternoon. In through the nose and out through the mouth…Everything smelled of dust and dry earth.

He scanned the landing zone, finally spotting DS Cameron meandering along the edge of the roof. She had her Thrummer slung casually over her shoulder-like a long, deadly handbag-her hands in her pockets and a smile on her face.

Will shook his head and joined the advance team.

They’d found one of the minor access escalators: a small plexiglass bunker squatting on the building’s roof. The transparent panes were all scratched, covered with fading graffiti tags, the plexiglass swollen and blackened in one corner, where someone had tried to burn the place down. The moving steps were gone, exposing a ramped tunnel that disappeared into the depths of the building.

Will looked down into the hole. ‘This the only option we have, Sergeant?’

Nairn nodded. ‘Aye, sir. If we want to steer clear of the main access points it’s this or we go down the outside on wires.’

Will tried not to shudder-there was no way he was going out over the edge of Sherman House on the end of a body-wire ever again.

Nairn gave the orders, sending Privates Dickson and Wright scurrying down the ramp into the darkness. He gave it a count of ten, then waved at the SOC team. ‘Beaton, Stein: you’re next. And keep the noise down this time! I don’t want every psychotic wee lowlife in the place using your bloody scanning equipment as a homing beacon.’

‘What do you mean “our scanning equipment”?’ Stein slapped the battered canister. ‘Just cos we’ve been lumbered with this shite four times in a row don’t mean we’re makin’ a career out of it!’

‘Shut your cakehole! You will hump that bloody scanning stuff about and you will like it. Or I will connect your rectum to your bloody ears with my boot!’ There was no smart reply from Private Stein, he just picked up his end of the SOC canister and clambered into the tunnel. Nairn nodded. ‘Better. Rhodes, Floyd: you’re on rearguard.’

Will picked his way carefully down the slippery ramp. Six feet in, the track twisted back on itself, doglegging around a support pillar, and as he turned the corner Will’s innards clenched. The toilets downstairs had been bad enough. But this was…This was…Jesus.

The breathing exercises weren’t working any more.

Stupid. It was just a building. Nothing to worry about.

So how come his legs wouldn’t move?

Inside, Sherman House hadn’t changed much in the last eleven years: dingy corridors, lined with silent, shuttered apartments. All the horrors locked away and secret. At least this time the carpets wouldn’t be sticky with blood.

Grubby plastic spheres lined the passageway, giving off a pale, insipid glow that did more to exaggerate the shadows than illuminate things. More graffiti lurked in the gloom, covering the beige walls like cheap tattoos. People trying to leave their mark on a world that had already forgotten about them.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and Will flinched. ‘No offence, sir,’ said Sergeant Nairn, ‘but think we could get a move on? I’d kinda like to get out of here before the natives go apeshit.’

‘Right. Sorry…’ Will cleared his throat. ‘Good point.’

He forced his feet to move again, following DS Jo Cameron down the broken escalator into the depths of the building.

‘You know,’ she said as they passed the fifty-first floor, ‘you seem a bit tense.’

‘Really.’ Will frowned in the darkness. It stank of mildew in here, stale air, and something sickly sweet and floral-not quite covering up the sour background smell of damp carpet.

‘Yeah, ever since George showed you those brain scans you look like you’re holding a hand grenade between the cheeks of your bum. I’ve visited Sherman House dozens of times, it’s not as bad as you think any more. Honestly.’

Will turned the next corner-looking out at another identical corridor. ‘Think we could just focus on the job in hand?’

‘If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

It seemed to take forever to work their way down to the forty-seventh floor.

Will hadn’t seen a single living soul since they’d arrived on the roof; nearly sixty thousand people lived in Sherman House and there was no sign of any of them. Like the place wasn’t creepy enough.

DS Cameron stepped off the escalator ramp, took one look at the shabby hallway, and summed up all that human misery and squalor in five words:

‘Can you smell cat pee?’

Stein and Beaton were hauling their scanning equipment along the threadbare carpet, swearing their way towards the late Allan Brown’s last known address. Past them Will could just make out the faint glimmer of a Whomper’s telltales: that would be Private Wright, standing guard. The sinister shape of Private Dickson and her Bull Thrummer lurked down the other end, cordoning off the whole area. Anyone wanting to cause trouble would end up missing a large part of their anatomy.

From the outside, flat 47-126 didn’t look like much: just another shabby brown door in a long line of shabby brown doors. Nairn motioned Floyd and Rhodes into position on the opposite side of the passageway, their weapons trained on the flat’s door at chest height. The sergeant reached into his mouth and pulled out a wad of chewing gum, rolled it into a sticky ball, then pressed it over the spyhole. He flattened himself against the wall next to the door, nodded at everyone, then reached out and knocked…

No reply.

Nairn pointed. Rhodes?’

The trooper clicked a button on the chunky oblong strapped to the barrel of his Thrummer, peered into the weapon’s sight. Pulled his head back. Frowned. Slapped the oblong twice. Then went back to the sight again, sweeping the Thrummer back and forth. ‘No sign of movement.’

Nairn turned to Will. ‘You want us to force it?’

He was about to say yes when DS Cameron walked over and crouched down in front of the keypad lock set into the wall beside the door. She popped the cover off with a pocket knife, pulled a thin piece of bent wire from her asymmetrical hairdo and stuck it into the circuitry. As she fiddled about, the display panel flashed warning red. Then ten seconds later a small bleep sounded and the lights went as green as her suit.

‘Open Sesame.’ She pushed the door open on silent, plastic hinges, revealing a small, dark hallway.

Will stared at her. ‘I don’t believe you just did that. A hairgrip?’

‘Yeah, well.’ She stood and worked the impromptu lock pick back into place above her left ear. ‘That’s technology for you.’

‘Unbelievable…’ He stepped into the tiny hallway, opened the door on the other side, and walked into a nightmare.

A fug of hot air washed over them, bringing with it the stench of rotting garbage. Like a bin bag left in the sun. The windows were covered with broad straps of black plastic. Slivers of light found their way through the gaps, falling across the cramped space in horizontal bars. One wall was given over to a collage made up of little bits of paper scrawled with dense handwriting, all glued together to form the life-size silhouette of an angel. Only this angel didn’t have a harp, it had a sword. A big red sword that dripped blood. But that was nothing compared to what sat in the middle of the room.

The paper angel stood guard over a pile of severed heads. Severed halfheads to be precise.

‘Oh-my-God.’ Jo Cameron stared at the mound. ‘So that’s where they all went to!’ There were at least fifteen of them, possibly more, all neatly arranged in a heap.

Will dug a reader out of his suit pocket and pressed it into her hand.

‘Get the barcodes.’

Biting her bottom lip, she reached forward and slid the electronic eye over the nearest disembodied head. The reader gave a disapproving clunk. She scowled at the display. ‘Non sample error. Must be all the wrinkles: thing looks almost mummified…’ Jo snapped on a pair of thin, blue plastic gloves and tried smoothing out the skin on the forehead. Then had another go with the reader. Clunk. ‘Come on you little sod…’

Will left her to it, picking his way through the rest of the squalid flat. Rubbish spread out from huge piles in the corners of every room, hiding the floor from view. The kitchen was awash with green, hairy mould. He opened the fridge door, gagged, then slammed it shut again, bathed in the unmistakeable sickly sour smell of rotting meat. Holding his breath, Will tried again, one hand clamped over his nose. In with the bloated plastics of milk and black slimy vegetables were thick cuts of pale meat, with a fatty, goose-pimpled rind. The flesh a nasty greenish-grey colour, speckled with black mould.

The light didn’t come on. Power was probably dead, which explained the smell.

Will closed the fridge door, then hurried through to the bedroom before he had to breathe in again.

It was a dark, cramped little room, stuffed with rubbish. Another six-foot angel collage dominated the wall above the bed, just visible in the gloom. Mr Brown had done a much better job of taping over the bedroom’s tiny window. Will punched the lightsight on his Whomper up to maximum, bathing the room in its eerie green glow. It leached away all the colours, turning the whole scene into a monochrome landscape of half-seen garbage.

He stepped forward and felt something crunch underfoot. He froze. Please don’t let it be what he thought it was…Gingerly, he lowered the Whomper’s barrel, spotlighting the refuse beneath his feet.

Emerald light glittered back at him from dozens of cracked plastic cylinders. It was just discarded HotNoodle tubes, their biodegradable plastic littering the nest like gaily patterned animal bones.

He waded through the filth to peer at the angel and its blood-soaked sword.

Each bit of paper in the collage bore the same handwritten quotation:

‘And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, Ifany man worship the beast and his image, and receive his markin his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation;and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever:and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast andhis image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.’

That explained a lot.

Back in the lounge, DS Cameron was still cursing her way through the pile of severed heads, scowling at the reader. ‘Come on, you little-’

‘I know why he did it.’ Will said as she banged the handheld device against the floor. ‘No, scratch that. I don’t know why he did it, but I know why he thought he was doing it.’

She hurled the reader at the heads, settled back on her haunches, then looked up at him, her face all pinched and lined. ‘Why does nothing ever sodding work?’

‘The angels: there’s another one in the bedroom. They’re made up of little bits of the Book of Revelation. Chapter fourteen.’

She frowned for a moment, then started to recite in an almost singsong voice, ‘“If any man worship the beast and his image”-’

‘“And whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”’ Will pointed at the heap on the carpet. ‘It’s the tattoo.’

He turned the lightsight on his Whomper down to a more reasonable operating level. ‘Tell the SOC team to start scanning the place. When they’re done, have them bag and tag anything that looks like a body part. Start with the fridge. But tell them to get a shift on. Sooner we’re out of here the better.’

‘OK.’ She stood, then stooped to pick up the discarded reader. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘The other body George showed us, he lived two doors down. I’m going to take a look.’ He turned and made for the door. ‘Oh, and see if you can dig a VR set out of this midden. If our halfhead-hunting friend really did have VR syndrome, there’ll be one in here somewhere.’

The door to flat 47-122 swung open after a small amount of fiddling with the lock. It wasn’t as quick as DS Cameron’s hairgrip method, but it didn’t leave any physical evidence of tampering. The tiny hallway was as nondescript as its neighbour, but the rooms beyond it were completely different. Allan Brown’s flat had been a lair. This had been a home. Right up to the moment when Mr Kevin McEwen came home and shot his wife Barbara in the face. Then he’d gone into the second bedroom and done the same thing to his two children, before turning the gun on himself.

The council clean-up crew had stripped the place back to the fixtures and fittings, leaving it bereft and lifeless. Will stood in the middle of the empty living room and tried to imagine it before Kevin McEwen wiped out his entire family.

Like all connurb block flats it was surprisingly small, even with all the furniture removed: a lounge with a screened off kitchen, one master bedroom, a toilet-shower, and a secondary sleeping cubicle. The rooms were decorated in ancient wallpaper: the pattern a mixture of dirty yellow and green, faded with age. Picture frames had left shadows on the walls, keeping rectangles of wallpaper rich and vibrant. A faint dark line marking the top edges. The McEwens must have been a house-proud pair, because other than that, the whole place was scrupulously clean.

A faint rumble sounded from down the hall. The SOC team had started scanning.

Will wandered from tiny room to tiny room; amazed that anyone could live somewhere this small, let alone raise two kids here. Every apartment in Monstrosity Square was the same: a testament to the ingenuity and inhumanity of the planning department.

Compressed Urban Habitation they called it. Cram as many people into as small a space as possible, then sit back and wonder why they start killing themselves. And each other.

He checked his watch, gave the meagre flat one last look, then headed back out into the hallway, locking the door behind him.

As Will hurried up the corridor the floor started to tremble. By the time he’d reached Allan Brown’s flat the sonics were in full swing. He had to shout to be heard over the din in the kitchen.

‘HOW MUCH LONGER?’

Stein puffed out his cheeks. ‘DONE THE LOUNGE AND BEDROOM, BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS: SOMETIMES THE MACHINERY WORKS FIRST TIME, SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO KICK THE HELL OUT OF IT.’ He aimed a boot at the scanner’s dented canister. ‘AND IT’S ALWAYS US! I MEAN IT WOULD BE FAIR ENOUGH IF IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE’S TURN NOW AND AGAIN, BUT FOR GOD’S SAKE: EVERY SODDIN’ TIME?’

Thankfully the howling scanning booms meant that Will could only catch snatches of the rant. He nodded in sympathy and when the subsonics kicked in mimed his concern and buggered off through to the main bedroom.

It was slightly quieter in here, but not by much, even with the door shut. DS Cameron and Sergeant Nairn were picking through the mounds of rubbish. A transparent evidence sack sat in the middle of the cluttered bed-there wasn’t much in it.

‘ANY LUCK?’

DS Cameron squinted at him. Then cupped a hand over her ear. ‘WHAT?’

‘HAVE YOU HAD ANY LUCK?’

‘A BIT. WHAT ABOUT YOU?’

‘WASTE OF TIME. THE MCEWENS’ PLACE IS CLEAN AS A WHISTLE, READY FOR THE NEXT POOR SODS TO MOVE IN. NOTHING LEFT.’

‘SORRY, CAN’T HEAR A THING OVER THAT BLOODY-’ The scanners fell silent and DS Cameron paused for a moment, then sighed. ‘God, that’s better…What were you saying?’

But Will was heading back to the kitchen: the scanners still had another cycle to go. If they were quiet now it meant they weren’t working. He burst into the room to see Stein and Beaton on their knees, poking at the equipment.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

Beaton jiggled one of the leads. ‘It’s buggered: that’s what’s wrong with it.’

Will checked his watch again. They’d been here almost fifteen minutes. Give it another six or seven to get back to the roof. Twenty-two minutes. Even then that was probably going to be tight. Running at full tilt the scanners would have interfered with all electronic activity within six hundred feet: that included the public virtual reality channels. Robbed of the only real escape they had, the locals would start looking for something else to fill the gap. Religion might have been the opium of the masses, but VR was their crack cocaine.

And no one liked going cold turkey.

‘How long to fix it?’

‘Don’t know.’ Beaton looked up at her colleague who gave a shrug. ‘Five, maybe ten minutes?’

That made it over half an hour. Will shook his head-there was a difference between reasonable risk and reckless stupidity. ‘You’ve got two.’

‘No chance. We’ve got to recalibrate the whole array or it’ll just fall over again.’

‘Then pack it up. We’re leaving.’

Stein shook his head and smiled as if he was talking to a small child. ‘You don’t understand-’

‘If you two aren’t ready to go by the time I count to ten, we’re leaving you behind. You can take your chances with the natives.’

‘But we-’

‘One. Two. Three-’

‘But,’ Stein pointed at the machinery’s dented casing. ‘The subsonics-’

‘Five. Six-’

‘We’ve got to recalibrate, or-’

‘Eight. Nine-’

‘But-’ He was beginning to go red in the face.

‘Ten. Time’s up.’ Will turned and shouted into the bedroom, ‘Sergeant Nairn, get your team together. We’re pulling out.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Nairn emerged from the bedroom with an evidence bag slung over his shoulder. DS Cameron was carrying one too, lurching after the sergeant into the lounge. With fifteen severed heads stuffed into the transparent sack, she looked like a macabre Santa Clause.

‘Did we get a VR set?’

‘Nairn’s got it,’ she said, as the man in question marched out the front door. ‘All twisted up into a pretty little shrine decorated with finger bones and jelly babies.’

Will closed his eyes. Blood and drums in the darkness. Definitely time to go.

‘Come on then.’ He ushered her out into the corridor.

A muffled, rapid conversation erupted in the apartment behind them: Beaton and Stein arguing over whether or not they’d really be left behind. Then there was the sound of mechanical scrabbling and professional swearing. The SOC team tumbled out of the flat, forcing their battered equipment back into its casing as they went.

‘All right, all right! We’re coming.’

Will reached up and keyed his throat-mike. ‘Lieutenant Brand, this is Hunter: prepare for dust-off.’

‘Roger that, Hunter. We are hot to trot.’

‘You see,’ said Detective Sergeant Cameron, hoisting her evidence bag, ‘nothing to worry about. I told you this place isn’t half as bad as you think.’

And that was when the shooting started.