Richard Morgan: Market Forces

At the bottom, it was the same story. Another grilled iron door, another rusted lock, this time on the inside, as if a retreating army had fought a rearguard action out of the zones and up onto the highway. Weeds had grown up to shoulder height on the other side of the grille, effectively hiding the bottom of the staircase from outside view. From the inside, you could barely see the twinned row of black brick-terraced housing beyond. Chris craned his neck and stared through the nodding heads of the weeds, listening, trying to get some sense of whether there was anybody nearby.

Nothing stirred.

He started hammering at the lock. Slipped a couple of times, scraped his hand on the rusting iron. It was hard to manoeuvre the shotgun in the confines of the cage, hard to get a working angle. When he finally stepped out through the weeds, he was sweating and sticky inside his suit.

The street beyond was empty.

He scanned the frontages - the only motion was the flap of plastic sheeting over a broken upper window. A wrecked and rusted Landrover, one of the late models modified to burn alcohol, was beached on its axles about twenty metres down the street. It was skeletal, stripped of everything that would come off, the frame scorched molotov-cocktail black where rust had not yet crept in. He spotted the passageway a couple of houses beyond on the left and moved cautiously out into the street. Unrepaired potholes gaped in the cracked asphalt, some of them wide enough to take the whole front end of the Saab.

He moved a couple of steps at a time, painfully aware of the windows looking down on either side, pausing to listen every two metres. Belatedly, he remembered the Remington’s safety and thumbed it off. Pumped out the last spent shell. The harsh metal noise it made shattered the quiet.

Suit and shotgun, he reasoned nervously. It ought to keep the flies off long enough.

He swung wide around the burnt-out Landrover, feeling slightly ridiculous as he covered the angles. He cleared the corner of the passageway. Moved down past high brick walls topped with broken glass. Detritus crunched under his feet. The passage came to an end amidst shallow mounds of weed-grown rubble and a clutch of leaf-canopied trees. He climbed the first mound with difficulty, burying his Argentine leather shoes to the ankle in little avalanches of sliding soil. From the top he saw the corrugated metal side of the commercial unit and a loading bay door, rusted open on empty square metreage beyond. In the gloom he could make out half of the BMW lying on its back. A qualified relief at his own navigational skills seeped—

Motion.

He whipped around, finger tightening on the Remington’s trigger.

And snatched it away again, as if the metal was hot. On the down slope of the next mound, two children around four or five years old were playing a game with the slaughtered limbs and torsos of plastic dolls. They froze when they saw him, then scrambled to their feet and started shouting.

‘Zek-tiv-shit, zek-tiv-shit! Zek-tiv-shit, zek-tiv-shit!’

He shook his head, lowered the shotgun and wiped a hand across his mouth. This close, the vehicle-shredder load would have—

‘Zek-tiv-shit, zek-tiv-SHIT!’ Elfin faces distorted with the force of the chant.

A woman’s voice came from one of the houses, raised and harsh with anxiety. The children vectored in on it, looked at each other for a moment that was almost comical, and then darted away like spooked animals. They scrambled across the mounds of rubble and through a hole in a wall he hadn’t seen. He was left looking at the plastic carnage of dismembered dolls.

Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck Louise Hewitt and her fucking plastic.

But he went on, over the rubble mounds, up to the loading bay door and through.

Inside, it was cold. Water dripped ceaselessly from the girder-laced roof and puddled along the lines of unevenly-laid concrete flooring. The BMW lay under the hole it had made, nose to the floor with the weight of engine and armour, back end in the air. There was a faint hissing from the front, and steam curled out through a gap where the hood had crushed out of true. Otherwise, it looked remarkably undamaged. The armouring had stood up.

Chris moved crab-wise to the driver-side door, hesitated a moment and then hooked it open. Bryant tumbled out like a bundle of unwashed clothes. Suit bloodied, eyes closed and mouth open. One arm trailed across the floor at an impossible angle to the rest of the body.

Nausea. The rising tide of delayed reaction from the duel. Chris pressed his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth and knelt beside the body. He stowed the shotgun under his arm and flapped back one side of Bryant’s jacket. The wallet gleamed gold-cornered from the inside pocket. He took it between thumb and forefinger and tugged it free. Flipped it open. The photo of Suki and Ariana smiled up at him opposite Mike’s racked plastic.

A hand closed around his leg.

Chris almost vomited with the shock. The shotgun clattered across the floor. He stumbled away from the car, broke the grip and saw. Bryant was still alive, eyes wide and staring up out of his inverted face. His good arm made feeble motions. His mouth opened and closed silently, like a landed fish. It was impossible to tell if he recognised Chris or not.

You go in and you finish the job. You don’t take them to the hospital afterwards.

He remembered Bryant’s gesture as the two cars ground against each other - the cocked thumb ripping across the throat. The grin. His mouth tightened and he picked up the Remington again.

You don’t take them to the hospital, Chris.

You finish the job.

He stepped back and raised the weapon. Bryant saw it and flailed desperately about on the concrete. A broken moaning came out of his mouth. It looked as if he was trying to bring his working arm up to his shoulder holster and the Nemex, but he didn’t have the strength. Chris clamped his mouth tighter, took another step back and levelled the shotgun. Jagged motion, quick, before he could give it thought. He’d stopped breathing.

Finish the fucking job, Chris.

He squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

No click, no detonation, no kick. No spray of blood and tissue. The trigger gave soggily through half the pull and stuck. Chris pulled harder. Still nothing. He worked the action and jacked a perfectly good unfired shell out into the air. It hit the concrete and rolled away, cheerful cherry red.

Mike’s face, pleading up at him.

Squeezed again. Nothing.

‘Fuck.’ It gritted out of him, as if he was afraid to be overheard in the empty warehouse. It still seemed to echo off the walls. ‘Fuck, fuck!’

The padlocks - hammering at the padlocks until they snapped and came loose. He remembered the savagery he’d brought to the action, the haphazard angles he’d been forced to use in the cage at the bottom of the stairs.

He’d jammed the mechanism, jolted something, maybe broken something inside, irretrievably.

He stood looking at Mike Bryant. Wiped his mouth and swallowed.

Finish it. Fucking finish it.

He stalked closer, staring fascinated into the other man’s eyes. Bryant gaped up at him, twitching. He made noises that sounded like the name Chris, the word please.

For some reason, it was enough.

‘Fuck you, Mike,’ he said quickly. ‘You had your chance.’

He turned the injured man’s head with one foot, reversed the Remington and jammed the butt of the weapon into Bryant’s exposed throat. Leaned his full weight on the gun.

‘Fuck you, Mike!’ Now he was spitting it, bent over and glaring into Bryant’s face. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, all of you suited fuckers!’

It seemed to take forever.

At first Bryant only made choking sounds. Then, from somewhere, he found strength to get his undamaged arm up and grab the Remington around the trigger guard.