Darren Shan: Hell's Horizon

Each of us had spent years studying the art of body language. You didn’t simply join the Troops and go on watch at Party Central. There was a six-month induction period, followed by five years in various branches and posts. Only then, if deemed worthy, were you introduced to the Party Central setup. A couple of months patroling the middle floors of the building, where you couldn’t do too much harm, then a gradual drift toward ground level. Several months pounding the beat in the rear yard, eventually moving out to guard the fences, and finally the front of the building and the lobby, where only the best were placed.

An unofficial extra requirement for front-line Troops was that they’d drawn blood during their tenure. All of the ten guards on duty had killed at least once in the name of The Cardinal.

I’d killed three times. The first was a butcher, after a mere eleven months in the service. He hadn’t been scheduled for execution. I’d gone around to his shop with a couple of more experienced Troops to squeeze protection money out of him. He was a stubborn, foolish old man. Lost his head. Let swing with a thigh-length blade. My colleagues ducked. That left me with a clear shot. I drew, took aim and — as he raised the knife high and roared like a bull — put four bullets through the center of his forehead, neat as you please.

It was a month before they let me back into uniform. A month of psychiatric analysis. I didn’t think that was necessary — as I kept telling them, I didn’t enjoy killing but wasn’t afraid of it — but this was back when The Cardinal was fighting to have the Troops legalized. We were in the public eye, a topic of hot debate, and a lot of people claimed we were no better than hired assassins. Tasso and his administrators had to play things cautiously. Hence the kid-glove treatment.

It was four years until I killed again, in a free-for-all shoot-’em-up with Russian mafia muscling in on The Cardinal’s territory. A hundred of us against thirty Ivans. The fighting raged through an apartment block they’d annexed. I was part of the third phalanx of Troops sent in. Ran up against a teenager in a dark, smoky hallway. He had a sock filled with coins and stones. I had a dagger that could have slit a bear’s chest open.

I started at Party Central a couple of weeks after that.

The third was three years ago. A crooked cop. It was the first time I’d been specifically sent to kill. I broke into his home while he was out. Gagged and tied up his wife and kid. Stood behind his bedroom door when I heard him entering downstairs. When he came in, I stepped out and put the lips of my gun to the back of his head.

Boom.

I nearly quit the Troops after that. It wasn’t the killing that got to me, but his status. He could just as easily have been a straight cop. Could have been Bill . You don’t make choices when you’re in the Troops — you go where told, shoot when ordered. I’d always known I might one day cross swords with Bill, but I only seriously contemplated the possibility after my run-in with the cop.

I came close to packing it in. Life would have been so different if I had. I might have patched things up with Ellen. I won’t say the job’s what came between us, but it didn’t help. If I’d found legitimate employment and spent more time working on my marriage than polishing my guns…

But past is past. No changing it. I dithered, drank, broke up with Ellen, drank some more. Bill finally weaned me off the bottle in his own inimitable way — he dragged me out of my apartment one drunken night and stuck a gun in my mouth. Told me his father drank himself to death. Said he wouldn’t let it happen to me. He’d rather kill me himself. Quicker that way. I stared into his eyes, found not even the ghost of a bluff, and went cold turkey the next day.

I had a long talk with Tasso once I sobered up. Told him I was thinking of quitting. Spilled my fears. He listened silently. Doubtless he’d heard it all before. When I finished, he shrugged his impossibly broad shoulders and sighed.

“What do you want me to say? Promise not to send you out to kill one of your friends? I can’t. Killing’s what you’ve been trained for. It took a long time to make a Troop of you, Algiers. If you want out, fine, you’re out. But if you stay, you carry on the same as before. You don’t get to choose your targets. You kill who you’re told, and if you don’t, you’ll be killed too.”

Tasso always served it to you straight.

I thought it over, weighed up the options and decided I was better off here than anywhere else. At least in the Troops I knew the score. So I carried on as normal and prayed I’d never have to go face-to-face with Bill or any of my friends.

I spent lunch in an underground canteen watching sports on the TV. One of those world-sports programs, cutting from surf trials to beach buggies to cliff-diving. It was on most days around this time and was the only kind of regular show on my itinerary — I didn’t have a TV at home.

Frank turned up toward the end of my break. Three-quarters of the people present sprang to their feet and started back to their posts, but he waved a hand at them and smiled ruefully. “It’s OK. I’m back to normal. No need to rush off.”

There were some cheers and everybody sat down again. That was the good thing about Frank — his moods passed quickly.

“Have a good weekend, Al?” he asked, taking the seat beside me.

“So-so.”

“How’s Bill?”

“Fine.”

Lots of people knew Bill. He ran a lucrative sideline in fireworks and had staged many private displays for friends and associates of The Cardinal’s. Bill was honest but realistic. If you were a cop in this city you could be straight but not antagonistic. It didn’t pay to get on the wrong side of The Cardinal.

“Hear about the stairs?” Frank asked.

“What about them?”

“We’re to keep off them, nights, till further notice.”

“How come?”

Frank shrugged. “Orders from above. No patrols. No guards on the doors.” He wasn’t happy. “You use the stairs a lot, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Keeps me in shape.”

He glanced about to make sure no one was listening. “You working overtime this week?”

“Three or four nights, most likely.”

“Mind if I assign you to the upper floors?”

I smiled. “I go where I’m told.”

“Good. And, y’know, I might send word a few times a night that I need to see you down below, and, when you’re coming—”

“—I’ll take the stairs?”

“Right,” he grinned. “Unofficially, of course. Just taking the opportunity to grab a spot of exercise.” He stood, checked the TV — two bare-chested giants were using their teeth and lengths of rope to haul trucks in a race against each other — and shook his head. “Don’t like leaving the stairs unguarded. The orders come from The Cardinal, but try reminding him of that if something goes wrong…”

Still shaking his head and muttering, he clapped me on the back and went about his rounds.

Cloak-and-dagger stuff like that was par for the course in Party Central. The Cardinal moved in mysterious ways. You often saw men and women of power roaming the corridors of Party Central, pulling their hair out by the roots. The braver ones — like Tasso and Frank — took matters into their own hands and plotted behind The Cardinal’s back, doing their best to protect him from his crazy flights of whimsy. It was fine if he didn’t find out, but if he did…

I wasn’t looking forward to taking the upper-floors watch — not much happened up there at night — but it always paid to do a man like Frank Weld a favor. You never knew when you might need one in return.

I spent the afternoon in the massive rear yard of Party Central. This was my favorite spot. Business was brisk, as a result of which time — the foe of bodyguards worldwide — flew by. Cars had to be checked and rechecked. The fence had to be probed hourly for weak points. Delivery teams, chauffeurs, executives — all were subjected to our scrutiny and tracked into the building if they looked in the least suspicious. The yard could have been Party Central’s Achilles’ heel if not properly policed. As it was, you had a better chance of blasting your way through the front than squeezing in by the back.