Simon Green - From Hell with love

I turned the sensory levels back down again; it was all just too much to bear. And I'd already spotted what I was looking for. The Merlin Glass, for all its bloody-minded literalness, had delivered me to the right spot. I could see Doctor Delirium's secret base, not half a mile away, glowing brightly in the sun beyond the trees.

There was no track or trail, or anything like a path, so I just moved forward in a straight line, forcing my way through the thick masses of vegetation by sheer brute strength. I kicked through the undergrowth, broke protruding tree branches with my hands, and elbowed aside the smaller trees. Nothing in the jungle could stand against me. Sometimes, when I'm in the armour, it feels like I'm moving through a paper world. Through something less real than me. I try not to let it affect me. It's a dangerous thing to believe. The armour can make you feel like a god, but it's important to remember that it's only as good as the idiot inside it.

Hanging lianas slapped against my shoulders and tied to curl around my arms, but I just tore them away and continued on. The bushy undergrowth didn't even slow me down. Thorns three or four inches long, thick as spikes, clattered harmlessly against my armour. I could hear small things hissing and squealing under my feet, and made a point not to look down. The larger local wildlife continued to observe me, from a respectful distance.

A huge millipede, nine or ten feet long, fell on me from above, and I made a high-pitched startled sound despite myself. The millipede tried to coil around my head and shoulders, failed to find any footing, and dropped away. I cringed, even inside my armour. I've never liked insects. Especially ones big enough to have forgotten their proper place in the scheme of things.

A large spatter of bird poo hit my right arm, white against the gold. I flexed the muscle, and the poo flew away as though shot from a gun, leaving nothing of itself behind. It was such a familiar reaction, I didn't even have to think about it. (London is, after all, a city full of pigeons.)

The tree line came to a sudden halt, looking out across a vast earth clearing. I stopped in the shadow of the last trees, to take a good look at Doctor Delirium's base. The first thing that struck me was that there was no sign of movement anywhere. No guards, no people, nothing. And all the jungle sounds had died away. No living thing had followed me to the edge of the clearing. No birds sang, no wildlife stirred. Even the insects at my feet seemed strangely subdued. As though something about the base frightened them… I held my position, studying the characterless buildings carefully, looking as far down the empty dirt streets as I could. There was something unnatural about such stillness, such silence…

I stepped forward, leaving the jungle behind me, and moved out into the earth clearing. Immediately a powerful force field seized me and held me in place, brought into being by my presence. It pinned me to the spot, great waves of energy coruscating around my armoured form, while small stabbing lightnings crawled all over it, searching for a weak spot and a way in. The air shimmered like heat haze, and the dirt at my feet was scorched black by discharging energies. But powerful as the field was, it was no match for my armour. It couldn't touch me.

I flexed my golden arms slowly, testing the strength of the field holding me in place. There was a definite tension, a solid resistance, like pulling against chains, but nothing the armour couldn't handle. I leaned forward, into the field, and set my strength against it. The lightnings jumped furiously, and great sparks detonated on the air, but I moved forward, step by step, chest stuck out as though breasting a tide, and the field could not stop me. I walked right through it, and suddenly it fell away, defeated. The crawling energies were gone, the air was clear again, and there was nothing left to stop me walking into Doctor Delirium's secret base.

I looked around me, braced for an attack from any direction, ready for shouting guards with big guns, or mercenaries with super-science weapons… but there was nothing. Just the silence and the stillness and the empty dirt streets. Except, when I looked carefully, there was something. The slow buzzing of flies, not far away.

Inside the huge earth clearing, the sun shone harshly on blunt and ugly steel and glass structures, presumably the science labs, surrounded by blocks of simple wooden terraces, low-ceiling huts mostly, the size of a village. It had clearly all been built for function, not style; thrown up quickly by people who had been on the move before, and were prepared to move again at a moment's notice. Doctor Delirium's little kingdom was a shabby state of affairs. The main building dominated the centre of the village, a steel and glass monument to the Doctor's ego. His main science lab, where he let his genius run riot.

I started down the narrow street, heading for the main lab. I was still tense, my skin crawling in anticipation of the attack I'd never see coming. From some hidden gun position, or some automated defence system like the perimeter force field. The sound of my heavy feet crashing on the ground carried clearly in the hush, and my golden armour blazed brightly under the hot sun, but still nothing moved in the streets between the low buildings. Nothing but me.

The sound of buzzing flies was getting louder.

I rounded a corner, and there on the street ahead were a series of vague black shapes. I couldn't work out what they were until I got close enough to disturb the black blanket of flies, and they sprang up into the air, leaving the bodies behind. There were dozens of them, stretching the whole length of the street. I looked back and forth, checking the side streets, and the bodies were everywhere. Dark huddled shapes, buried under flies. The dead men and women lay alone, in twos and threes, and in great piled-up heaps. I made myself walk on, flies buzzing angrily all around me now, harsh and strident. I stepped around and over bodies, some dressed in black and gold, others clearly scientists and workmen. Their ragged clothes were soaked in blood and their wounds were terrible. Flies crawled all over them, jumping up when I came close, and settling again after I'd passed.

The whole place was a Jonestown-everyone was dead. Only here, the people hadn't killed themselves; they'd killed each other. I moved out of one street and onto another, and the dead lay everywhere, broken and butchered. I knelt down to examine some of the bodies, waving the flies away with my golden hand. They hung on the air nearby, buzzing angrily but unwilling to approach my armour. I checked out the extent and origins of the wounds with my golden fingers. I didn't have to bother about infection, as long as I didn't armour down. The stench, of spilled blood and exposed guts, of so many dead people, suddenly became too much for me and I shut down the mask's? scent detectors. I daren't armour down long enough to throw up. I straightened up, and stepped back from the bodies.

I felt sick, in my stomach and in my soul. I had no place here, in this village of the dead. I wanted to turn and run and get the hell away, leave this madness behind. People aren't supposed to see things like this, do things like this. But I was a field agent, and I had work to do. I'd be weak later, when I had time. And if I had nightmares later, well, that came with the job, sometimes. Something terrible had happened here, and I had to find out how and why, to make sure it could never happen again. Duty and responsibility have their uses-they keep us going when courage might not be enough.

I made myself let the stench back in. It wasn't so bad, knowing it was coming. And bad as it undoubtedly was, there wasn't much actual decomp. Blood and guts, yes, but not much rot or decay. Given the blazing heat of the overhead sun, this wholesale slaughter couldn't have happened that long ago. This… was a recent massacre. Whoever or whatever had done this, I hadn't missed it by much.