Halfhead - Страница 62

Brian dragged him to his feet, singing, ‘Oh Kenny boy, the pipes, the pipes are callin’,’ as he slammed him back into the wall.

‘Brian, don’t.’ Will sighed and looked away. The initial burn had gone, leaving a bitter taste behind. The Network didn’t make people disappear, it hauled them into court. All above board and legal. ‘Read him his rights, he’s got an appointment with an operating table.’

‘After what this wee shite did to Jo? Halfheadin’s too good for him.’ He stuck his face inches from Ken’s blood-caked features and shouted, ‘Wakey wakey, Kenny, it’s time to get the shite kicked out of you!’

Ken still hadn’t said anything, but his eyes were wide, dancing back and forth, his cheeks twitching, teeth gritted. Brian slapped him again.

‘Your lucky day Kenny: two beatin’s for the price of-’

It was if someone had run a thousand volts through Ken’s battered body. He exploded off the wall, hands wrapping round Brian’s head, teeth snapping like a rabid dog. Sinking them into Brian’s cheek, ripping, tearing…

‘Aaah!’ Brian shoved him away. ‘Ya wee bastard!’

Ken spat out a chunk of Brian’s flesh, then lunged, going for the throat.

Brian whipped his head back and then forward again, smashing his forehead into Peitai’s nose. Crack. They both staggered off: Brian into the middle of the tunnel, blood pulsing out from the hole in his cheek, Petai groping along the wall. The maglev rail caught Brian in the back of the knees and he went down like a sack of tatties, banging his head off the floor.

Will grabbed Ken on the rebound and smashed his elbow into the little bastard’s face. Ken’s nose burst like an egg, but it didn’t even slow him down. He bared his teeth again and jumped, knocking Will off his feet. They crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Will scrabbled backwards, trying to get away from those blood-stained teeth.

Ken’s hands groped for Will’s cheeks and for a heartbeat the flashing emergency lights sparkled off the glass embedded in his right palm. The blood that dripped from the sharp, curved edges wasn’t clean and red: it was tainted with something green and viscous. Something that had turned Ken Peitai rabid.

Will stopped trying to fight off the teeth and grabbed the back of Ken’s injured hand, forcing it over on itself-trying to snap the wrist. Peitai kept coming.

‘BRIAN!’

Blood poured out of Ken’s shattered nose and the gash across his face. Lunging forward he sank his teeth into Will’s eyebrow. Sharp, stabbing pain.

‘Argh! Get off me!’ Will rammed his right thumb into Ken’s eye socket all the way up to the first knuckle. That got his attention. He let go of Will’s face with a gargled scream, and struggled to his feet, one hand pressed against his ruined eye, trying to hold the contents in.

Then he lurched back into the middle of the tunnel and staggered away into the dark.

Will picked himself off the floor and grabbed his stolen Thrummer. His torn eyebrow throbbed and stung, blood dribbling into his eye. He wiped it clean on his sleeve-grimacing as the fabric pulled at the wound-but it just filled up again.

Brian was still lying flat on his back, groaning and swearing.

‘Look after Jo.’ Will flicked on the Thrummer’s lightsight and headed off down the tunnel, following the sound of Ken’s footsteps.

Everything smelt of damp and mildew and hot copper and oil and death.

‘You won’t get away, you know that don’t you, Peitai?’

No reply.

Dark splashes of blood sparkled in the lightsight’s green glow, like slicks of oil. The little bastard was moving fast and Will had to jog to keep up. Whatever Ken had in his top pocket it had done more than turn him bug-crazy, it had given him a whole new lease of life.

The tunnel twisted off to the left and Will stopped for a moment, straining his ears, trying to tell where Peitai was. It wasn’t easy, but he could just make out the scuff-click, scuff-click of cowboy boots in the darkness.

The air was changing: he could feel it on his face as he moved. It was warmer here than it had been back at the platform, less musty-that meant the main line was close. He stopped again and listened…

Nothing but silence.

Either Ken had stopped running or that handful of glass and chemicals had finally killed him.

Will stepped into the middle of the tunnel, one leg brushing the cold metal of the maglev rail. He swept his Thrummer back and forth like a spotlight, looking for a target, but all he could see were shadows, haunting the empty alcoves between the stanchions and the end of the tunnel, where it joined the shuttlenet.

‘Where are you, you wee-’

Something snatched at his ankle and pulled.

The floor disappeared beneath Will’s feet and he tumbled backwards, hitting the concrete hard. The Thrummer roared in his hands, filling the dark tunnel with blue light that danced in an expanding ball of dust as a chunk of ceiling evaporated. His head cracked against the tunnel wall and the weapon jumped out of his hands, skittering away down the passageway. It clattered to a halt, the lightsight pointing back up the tunnel, casting grotesque shadow puppets across the concrete as Peitai leapt on him. Teeth flashing in the green glow.

A hand grabbed Will’s face and he sank his teeth into it-not caring if there was glass in the palm or not.

Ken screamed, a bellow of animal pain with nothing human in it.

Will scrabbled away from the reaching hands. Not fast enough. Something slashed across his cheek and he felt the hot sting of flesh parting beneath multiple tiny blades of glass.

Bastard! He drove his knee into Ken’s groin, hard enough to jack-knife him three feet into the air. Peitai collapsed, vomiting, clutching his groin.

Will scrubbed at the cuts on his face with the sleeve of his jump suit. The little bastard had infected him!

‘Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!’

There had to be something in the jumpsuit’s med-kit he could use. He fell to his knees and fought the pouch free from its clips, spilling the contents across the floor.

‘Blockers, skinpaint, dressing,’ His hands fumbled through the pieces, spreading them far and wide. ‘Skinglue…Where the fuck’s the Biolene?’ His fingers wrapped around a tube of sterilizing paste. It wasn’t perfect, but it was all that he had. He ripped the top off with his teeth and mashed the sticky gloop into the cuts on his cheek. Then did the same with his torn eyebrow, just in case whatever it was could be transmitted through Ken’s infected saliva.

He looked up, suddenly aware that he’d taken his eyes off the evil little bastard for far too long. Peitai wasn’t rolling around on the concrete holding his ruptured testicles any more-he was on his feet, limping, knock-kneed down the tunnel towards the fallen Thrummer. Will scrabbled after him, but it was too late. Ken had made it out of the branchline and into the main tunnel, snatching the assault weapon up off the deck.

Peitai screamed at him, the words making no sense, jumbling into one another like meat in a grinder as the Thrummer’s lightsight caught Will in its green gaze.

A soft whisper of air stirred the dust cloud of evaporated ceiling. Will looked about for somewhere to hide, but all he could see was empty tunnel. His eyes darted back to Ken-the little man seemed to be lit up from within, a soft nimbus of white light sparkling around him, getting brighter with every heartbeat…

The shuttle hit him hard enough to spread him all over the inside of the tunnel like pâté.

30

She follows the old man as he hurries through the facility, making for the hidden exit to Monstrosity Square-the one they used to sneak her through for their little Twenty Questions torture sessions. He knows the value of discretion when the Network comes a-rampaging armed to the teeth. She lets him get all the way to the doorlock before she stops him.

‘Hold it right there!’ She bathes him in the Bull Thrummer’s targeting beam.

He doesn’t flinch, she admires that. Instead he pulls himself up to his full height and turns on her. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to do here,’ he says, all clipped and educated, not moving a muscle. ‘But I can assure you I am not someone you want to interfere with.’

She swings the Bull Thrummer up and evaporates a chunk of roof above his head. Concrete particles drift down over his tall, black-cloated shoulders like microscopic dandruff.

He coughs and splutters as the dust settles. ‘You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Your Network friends aren’t going to save you. I can make you disappear, just like that!’ He snaps his long, surgeon’s fingers and she laughs.

‘I’ve already disappeared.’ She pulls a pebbled disk from her jumpsuit pocket, then twists the Palm Zapper’s power dial down to ‘LIGHT STUN’, keeping the Thrummer on him at the same time. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

He sticks his chest out like a fighting cock. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’

‘You,’ she says, pointing the Palm Zapper at his face, ‘are Tomuku Kikan. You stole my research, you stole my face, you stole my life.’ She smiles: a cold, sharp, hard-edged thing. Broken glass. ‘Did you really think you’d get away with it Tomuku? Did you?’ Her finger caresses the trigger gently and little sparks dance around the disk’s rim. ‘You should have known better than that.’

‘Who…’ There’s uncertainty in his eyes now. ‘Who are you?’

She just smiles and shoots him.

The shuttle didn’t even slow down. It sped away down the main line, the stanchion lights fading out behind it. Will stood in the growing darkness with chunks of Ken Peitai congealing on his jumpsuit.