Tim Lebbon - White and Other Tales of Ruin

They strafed the whole interior of the club with gunfire. People span and danced and fell, screaming and shouting, tumbling from their platforms and hitting those below, or falling all the way to the litter-strewn floor. The band played on for a few seconds, adding a surreal theme tune to the massacre. Grenades popped from the mercenaries’ armour like black eggs being laid, arching up and exploding in mid-air, shrapnel slashing visible swathes through the smoke. One explosion ripped out a ladder and set of chains, tipping a platform and spilling those cowering on it to the floor far below. They hit like rag dolls, limbs askew.

The band cut out as the power stuttered, flickering the lights and adding a stroboscopic effect to the twitching clubbers, the blood spraying the air, the corpses slipping down from platform to platform, bullets and shrapnel ricocheting through swathes of drug smoke, the three mercenaries advancing into the club like huge spiders, swinging their way from platform to platform, spreading out, leaving dead or dying people in their wake.

Skin had pulled Honey down as soon as the gunfire began, and Tom hunkered down next to them, staring over the rim of the huge platform. They were maybe a hundred feet from the floor, the mercenaries a few levels below them. At the rate the chopped warriors were advancing, they’d be on them in seconds.

One of the mercenaries suddenly slipped to one side, flame flowering from his midriff, arms flailing for a handhold. He tumbled from the platform but found a chain before he fell too far. The flames were already extinguished, but a rain of blood and insides was dripping from his dangling legs.

He brought up three guns and opened fire on a platform across from him. Tracer rounds directed his aim to a metal shield that had sprung up there, and Tom could make out a few people sheltering behind it, frantically fumbling with a some huge barrelled weapon.

The other two mercenaries paused to watch.

The fighter stopped firing for a second. The recoil had set him swinging, and the whine of chains was audible across the club. Reload springs lunged from his belt and fed magazines into the machineguns.

Two men stood from behind the barrier, aimed and fired.

The mercenary disintegrated, flames slewing outward as his ammunition ignited.

A second later the victorious attackers were torn to pieces by a five-second hail of fire from the two surviving intruders. Bullets, flame and grenades scattered their remains over what was left of their platform.

“We should have just left the city!” Tom shouted at Honey. “This is all for us!” But his anger was misplaced and useless now.

“Don’t talk!” Skin hissed. “They’ll be scanning for your voice patterns. Your one hope is to trust me and maybe I can get you both out of here. But we have to move, you have to follow me, now !” He turned and belly-crawled across the floor, shoving people aside with his big hands.

The gunfire and explosions stopped, but the mercenaries had initiated the panic they desired. Screaming and crying and moaning continued, almost as loud as the sounds of killing. Interspersed amongst them, the clanking impacts of metal-booted feet on ladders, chains and platforms, always coming nearer.

Maybe they’d already been spotted.

Honey was following Skin. Tom watched her go, and then followed her. He had no choice. To stay still was to die, to go after Skin was to submit himself to the man’s mercy. He was helpless, useless… and he realised that he’d been almost totally ineffectual since leaving the Baker’s old laboratory.

Honey had always been the one in charge. The strong one. Their only real hope.

People moved aside to let them pass. The band was cowering on the stage, trying to edge back but tangling themselves in power lines and the expansive drum kit. Skin crawled across the stage, Honey followed, and Tom was about to follow her when he heard a high-pitched shriek from somewhere else in the club.

It was not a human sound. It was a fighting sound, an angry shrill from vocal chords designed to communicate nothing but pain and terror.

He half-stood and hurried to the edge of the stage, from where he could see at least a third of the club’s space. From the corner of his eye he spotted a dark shadow swinging and scampering along one huge wall, aiming at a place half-way to the ground. Another shape swung from rope to chain to ladder, heading the same way. They screeched in unison now, and Tom tried to make out their target.

And stared into his own eyes.

He was standing down there on a platform, surrounded by chopped people whose bodies were already punctured and torn, leaking blood around his feet. He was standing down there and looking up. From this distance Tom could not quite make out the expression in his eyes… but he recognised his own quiet smile.

“Holy shit…” Honey said, appearing at his shoulder.

The two mercenaries landed on the platform either side of the second Tom. Without pause they stretched out their arms, locked their weapons onto him and opened fire.

Tom watched himself come apart. The bullets tore him to shreds, blood and bone splashing into the air, skull splitting and gushing brain out across the platform. The gunfire only lasted for two seconds, but the thing that slumped down at the mercenaries’ feet could never have been visually identified… had Tom not seen its face.

One of the mercenaries snatched a quick sample of blood. Then they used their flame units, and the sad remains bubbled black.

Tom crawled back from the edge of the stage, head down, feeling more cold and alone than he could have believed. Even when Honey came back to him, touched his face and slung one arm across his back, Tom felt abandoned. He’d just seen…

He didn’t know what he’d seen.

“I guess they’re just looking for you now,” he said to Honey. His voice sounded shallow and vague.

“What happened?” Honey said.

“I think I died.” Tom smiled at her. Already, the mysterious threads were coming together. “Let’s go. If we escape, we can talk about it then.”

“You could hide,” she said. “You could leave me, let them come after me and catch me if they can — ”

Tom did not even honour this with a response.

Skin led them to the rear of the stage and across a narrow metal walkway, connecting the stage platform with the blank outside wall. There was a flimsy handrail, the only thing between them and the floor a hundred feet below, but it had been distorted at several points by bullet or shrapnel impacts. None of them trusted it.

Tom felt naked and exposed, expected the intrusive kiss of a bullet at any moment. The way Honey moved ahead of him — shoulders hunched, arms pulled in, legs slightly bent — he thought she did too.

The Slaughterhouse had gone amazingly quiet since the mercenaries killed Tom’s doppelganger. Tom could still hear the clambering, clanking footsteps of the hunters as they searched for Honey, but the clubbers had all fallen silent, either dead or shocked dumb. Perhaps they feared that now the killers had found and killed their target, any slight sound would merely set them on the rampage again.

Tom, Honey and Skin reached the wall. Skin led them through a door, cleverly concealed in the shadows of a concrete overhang. It emerged onto the head of a staircase. Tom stood on the landing and looked down, down, until the flights disappeared in a grey haze. It seemed far deeper than the club.

“It’s the only way I can think of to get you out,” Skin said. “It goes straight down to the basements. The theatres. From there you can get out onto the streets or down into the sewers and tunnels… just about anywhere.”

“They’re only looking for me now,” Honey said. “Tom, who was that?”