Tim Lebbon - White and Other Tales of Ruin

And that was hopeless.

The street had quietened suddenly, all conversation and laughter and singing smothered by terror. The only sounds now were their own pounding footsteps and the regular, incredibly fast slap-slap-slap-slap of the mercenaries’ hydraulically driven feet meeting concrete. The hunters closed in quickly, echoes bringing them even nearer. Tom knew that they would be caught within seconds.

He glanced at the people pressed against walls or huddled in alleys, but no one would meet his eye.

“Where?” he gasped, and Honey reached behind her and grabbed his hand, squeezing. Hours ago she had been shut down and deflated, and now here she was running for her life from three mercenaries, people so drastically chopped that they were more mutant than human, more machine than mutant. Her new charge must be draining quickly.

It wouldn’t matter. Within a few seconds they would have either escaped — and Tom had a hunch now as to where Honey was leading them — or they’d be dead.

At least their deaths would be quick. The mercenaries were trained killers, and from what Tom knew of them they had no time for torture or melodramatic acts of vicarious vengeance. If they were hired to kill they killed, in the most effective and economic manner available.

They’d probably crush his skull under their feet to save on ammunition.

As if conjured by his panicked thoughts, a machine gun opened up behind them. He’d never been near to gunfire, and the sudden cacophony shocked him, the white-hot kiss of bullet trails across his skin sending him into a state approaching panic. Bullets thumped into the ground ahead of them, spinning shattered concrete slabs along the street. More impacted the facades of shops and buildings, and Tom was sure he saw indistinct shadows flailing and spinning, heard the surprised cries of innocent victims. The gun paused for a moment, and as Tom wondered why something smashed into his ankle, taking his feet from under him and sending him across the concrete on his face.

“Grenade!” Honey hissed. She grabbed Tom, dragging him clumsily across the pavement and into the doorway of an old hotel.

It stank of piss and stale booze, and the pain from Tom’s foot brought everything out clearly, even in the weak streetlight: the crumpled newspapers damp beneath him; Honey trying to hug the two of them into one; the smell, the stench, a miasma of everything that could show fear.

There was a surreal moment of utter quiet in the street before the grenade exploded.

They were protected from most of the blast by the reveal of the inset door. The ground shook, windows shattered and rained glass across the street, bricks burst into stinging powder, people screamed, the air was sucked from Tom’s lungs by the blast, his outstretched legs were shoved into the brick wall, bringing more white-hot agony. He heard Honey moaning beside him, and he reached for her and cried out joyously as she squeezed his hand twice, a message that could only mean I’m fine . He squeezed back as he stared to get to his feet.

“We may have a second or two,” he said. His voice sounded distant, eardrums ringing. The echoes of the blast still reverberated along the street, and now he could hear more cries, moans and screams of pain or shock.

And fading in as the explosion passed away, the slap-slap-slap of the mercenaries’ continuing pursuit.

“Come on!” he hissed. “Wherever you were going, go!”

Honey stood, rubbed dust from her eyes and lead them back out onto the pavement.

The feeling of stepping into full view of the mercenaries was terrible. But it was their only chance. If they remained in the doorway the chopped warriors would be on them in seconds, and then it would simply be a matter of a bullet to the back of the head or a quick spray from a flame unit. At least in the open there was a chance. The dust and smoke from the blast gave a false sense of concealment, but Tom knew that the fighters’ senses were paring in on them even now, radar and sonar, heat detectors and biometric scanners picking them out of the chaos.

Tom’s ankle gave way and he fell to one knee, but Honey pulled him up and he staggered on. The pain was incredible — he’d never felt anything like it before — and he tried unsuccessfully to block it out.

Each second that passed, he expected the slew of bullets that would cut him in half.

“Here!” Honey said, darting left into a small alley. There was more gunfire behind them, a sustained burst accompanied by fresh screams. Ricochets echoed between the tall buildings, startling flocks of fat pigeons aloft. Bullets annihilated the walls either side of the entrance, exploding bricks, disintegrating corners, sending shrapnel cutting along the alley. Tom’s jacket and shirt were ripped, his skin scoured by hot shards of stone.

“Run!” Honey shouted. “Ten meters!”

Tom heard the footfalls of the mercenaries slow, and a grind of metal on concrete as one of them stopped and pivoted at the alley entrance.

Next would come the grenade, or a hail of explosive-tipped bullets, or perhaps a shower in fire.

The alley ended with a blank wall holding a pocked, solid-looking door. Tom began to fear that Honey really had no idea where she was going — her headlong flight driven by panic, pure and simple — but then she stopped and punched a lever on the wall.

She turned to look at him, her eyes wide, breathing harsh and heavy. It sounded like something in her throat was broken; every time she breathed, it clicked. And as Tom noticed the scorched bullet trail reaching from just beneath her left ear to her mouth, so she glanced over his shoulder and her eyes widened.

A doorway opened in the wall next to them. It was camouflaged by moss, the green-grey growth on the scarred metal merging it in with the old brickwork.

Several black metal eggs bounced against their feet.

Honey fell sideways, pulling Tom with her, and they landed on the piss-stinking floor of an elevator.

The doors started to slide shut. Tom watched the grenades spinning in lazy circles as they came to rest on the alley floor… with one of them rolling slowly towards the closing doors. It rolled, the doors hissed together, Tom could not breathe… and he heard the tiny tap as the grenade struck the doors a second after they had finally closed.

Honey kicked up at the control panel and sent them humming downwards. She looked at Tom, seeing right into him and telling him so much, and he knew that this moment was life or death. In two seconds they would be alive to run some more, or dead, smashed bodies in a blasted lift, left to rot down here, food for rats, wild cats and perhaps a desperate, dying buzzed.

The grenades exploded.

The shockwave buckled the lift walls and punched Tom like a train. He cried out but could not hear, because his ears were already bleeding. Blood oozed from his nose, his eyes, his mouth. The lift must have been below ground level — otherwise the blast would have crushed it like a cardboard box — but the remains of the wall above showered down onto the roof, shoving it down faster than the lift could take. Something whined and screeched and then snapped. The lift jerked sideways, tilted ten degrees, grumbled for a few seconds and then stuck fast.

“No!” Honey shouted. She stood and leaned on the control panel, punching buttons, looking at the doors as if willing them to open. “Tom, we have to open these. Those bastards won’t stop until they can see our corpses.”

“Where are we?” Tom knelt by the doors and shoved his fingers in the warped crack, pulling both ways. He was ridiculously aware of Honey’s leg pressed against his upper arm as she did the same higher up, its muscles tensing and spasming as she heaved.