Michael Grant - Bzrk Apocalypse

Small, then. Easier to carry home. Less chance of catching some smart remarks from passing thugs.

He’d been on top of the world. Now he was self-conscious about being seen by others his age, struggling with plastic bags of pasta and Nutella and onions. The white kind.

A pretty girl coming toward him looked right through him like he was invisible.

He’d had the most beautiful girl in the world. Jessica. She’d been a slave to him. A slave. The memories made him ache inside. He would never get within conversational range of a girl like that again.

Top of the world, that’s where he’d been. But all that was gone now. All that gone and now he was invisible to women and girls. He was a moderately attractive black teenage boy with no obvious signs of wealth or future prospects. Why would they look at him?

He rounded a corner, walked glumly past aisles of this and that, entirely forgetting the pasta, ignoring the plastic-wrapped slabs of meat to one side, heading to onions.

He felt rather than saw that something had changed.

Instinct. Some sense that was not quite sight, sound, smell or touch. The certainty that he was being watched. Without turning to look he knew he was being followed. His speed was being matched.

He walked slower, stopped, pretended to admire the lamb; but the presence did not pass him by.

He moved suddenly toward the grocery department, walking too fast, and he felt his pursuer keep pace.

Well.

Well. Ah. So. So was it cops or killers?

His heart was heavy in his chest. His feet dragged a bit, just the toes scraping on the tile. Shit, he’d just started to think maybe he was out of it, that maybe the Armstrongs would let him go. He’d given them a lot of good work, after all.

If not some hit man for the Armstrongs, was it police? Or even MI5?

He stopped in front of a bin of oranges and rested his hand on one, just feeling it. He liked oranges. Was this the last one he would see for a long while? Or the last one ever?

He turned, resigned, not seeing the point really in continuing to pretend. And there was his pursuer.

Now surely that was not a cop or MI5.

The man was well-dressed, almost like a banker. Far too posh-looking to be a cop. He was a black man, tall, thin, with glasses, and when he met Anthony’s eyes he smiled. Like an old friend. At first Bug Man felt himself relaxing, but no, no, that was a bad idea. A smile meant nothing.

“You want something?” Bug Man asked. His voice was ragged. Maybe the expensive suit hadn’t noticed.

“Anthony Elder?”

He nodded. What would be the point in lying?

What about running? He could surely outrun this man.

“Are you here to kill me?”

The man was not surprised by the question. “Not at this time.” He smiled. “But you will be taken for questioning by this time tomorrow.”

“Haven’t done anything.”

“Oh, come now, you know better than that. People of our particular skin tone don’t need to be guilty of anything to be questioned by the police, now, do we?”

Bug Man moved a step sideways, edging along the oranges. He spotted the onions. The white ones.

“Met police will pick you up tomorrow, but of course it’s not really for themselves. They’ll turn you over to the Security Service, to MI5, for questioning.”

The man moved closer so he could speak more quietly. He smelled of sandalwood and spearmint. Bug Man liked the cologne, didn’t like the man belonging to it. He had a ridiculous urge to ask him whether it was available for sale here at Tesco.

“They will detain you on a secret warrant and in all likelihood you will be given a chance to plead guilty so as to avoid a public trial. They’ll put out a statement accusing you of something like embezzlement. Something safe for public consumption. They’ll promise to let you out in a few years, and they would, really they would. Except that you’ll have been gutted by some hardened lifer in your cell long before that. They’ll make sure of that. If they don’t, their cousins will—the Americans.”

Bug Man licked his lips. This was a threat, but not just a threat. This was the beginning of an offer.

“Whatever they want, the Twins, whatever they want, I’m still the best; I’m still fucking Bug Man .”

“The Twins?” The man made a crestfallen face, an act, a little show that he was putting on. Bug Man wanted to punch him. “Oh, yes, the Twins . Well, Anthony, this is not really about them. I’m not able to tell you anything, really, but I can tell you that I don’t work for the Twins.”

Bug Man took a breath. He’d forgotten to do that. “Who are you, then?”

“My name is George. George William Frederick.”

He said it as if it should mean something to Bug Man. And it did ping some distant, dusty strand of memory. But nothing meaningful. It was a name out of a different time, Bug Man felt.

“You slept through history, didn’t you?” George William Frederick said. “That’s a shame. History is everything important, really. In any case, I’m here because the surveillance team that has been on you for every minute of the last month is outside, in the car park, drinking coffee in paper cups and eating HobNobs, confident that you will soon emerge with your groceries. They’ll follow you home, as per their orders, log your movements, and go off shift at eight p.m. They won’t bother with physical surveillance after that; they’ll be watching on the cameras they have in your home. Yes. So, as it happens, this would actually be an opportune time for you to follow me, out of the back of the shop, to a waiting car.”

Bug Man immediately ran through some of the more embarrassing things that would have been observed by cameras in his home. But he was mostly over the concept of privacy. The Twins had had cameras on him from the start of his employment by them.

“And then?” Bug Man asked.

George-With-Three-Names shrugged. “All I can tell you is that an Armstrong hit team is also looking for the right moment to shoot you, and tomorrow MI5 will bundle you off to prison where they or the Americans will do for you, and the third alternative, the one I’m offering you, is preferable.”

Bug Man knew the man was speaking the truth. Or at least believed himself to be telling the truth.

George-With-Three-Names. George William Frederick. The penny dropped.

George III.

The mad king.

“You’re BZRK.”

“Think what you like,” George said with a self-satisfied smile. “I’m your way out.”

“You are going to kill me.” Bug Man was proud that he managed to get the words out with only a minor tremor in his voice.

George tapped his waist. There was something there that was no belt buckle. “If that were my instruction, you’d never know about it. By the way, you’re not Roman Catholic, are you?”

“What? C of E, I guess. But—”

“Good.”

Bug Man let it go. The point was, this wasn’t an assassination. “Will I have time to say good-bye to my mother?”

George shook his head.

“Good,” Bug Man said. He nodded, smiled for himself alone and thought, Okay then: back in the game .

ARTIFACT

An exchange of texts

Plath:Back in NYC. What is our mission?

Lear:Destroy AFGC.

Plath:What does that mean?

Lear:Find and kill the Twins. Destroy all AFGC records. Kill or wire all AFGC scientists and engineers. Their technology must be obliterated.

Plath:I’m to do this with 7 people?

Lear:You had your vacation. Besides there is an 8th.