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.
Chris kicked the hand away and stood on it. He was panting.
Mike’s choking sounds grew frantic. He twisted his head against the concrete. He curled his trapped fingers around the edges of Chris’s shoe, nails clawing at the Argentine leather.
Chris leaned harder. Tears sprang out in his eyes and streamed down his face. He lifted his foot and stamped down hard on Mike’s hand. He heard the dry snap as one of the fingers broke. He leaned harder. His whole weight lifting on the braced shotgun, taking his body almost off the floor.
Something crunched. Mike stopped moving.
Afterwards, Chris could barely get himself upright. It was as if the shotgun had suddenly become indispensable, as if he’d been afflicted with a sudden muscular disease. He limped back from the corpse, trembling so violently his teeth chattered. He made less than a dozen steps. He bent suddenly double and, finally, threw up. A thin helping of vomit and bile - he’d barely eaten that morning, but what he had came up. He dropped to his knees in a puddle, retching.
The sound of boots through the wet.
He looked up, only vaguely interested, and saw the men. Big, blocky forms in the filtering light from outside, like knights in armour from some mediaeval fantasy.
He blinked to clear his eyes.
There were nine of them, dressed in the cordoned zone gangwit ensemble. Cheap, grimed clothes, loose canvas trousers, bulky padded jackets, shaven heads and workboots. Hands held crowbars, wrenches, sawn-off pool cues and a variety of other items too jagged to identify. Faces were scarred with streetfight souvenirs. Eyes watchful on the scene they’d just interrupted.
He got unsteadily to his feet. One of the men stepped forward. He was near two metres tall, heavily muscled under a sleeveless T-shirt scrawled red with the legend I am the Minister for the Redistribution of Health. The lettering was splattered to make it look bloody. His face was scarred from the corner of the left eye and down the cheek. It gave him an oddly mournful look.
‘Finished, have you? Is he dead?’
Chris blinked and coughed.
‘Who are you?’ he asked harshly.
‘Who are we?’ Laughter rasped out, first from one throat, then building to a rattling echo off the metal roof. It died out as abruptly. The gangwit spokesman was swinging a short black-enamelled prybar softly and repeatedly into his left palm. His gaze seemed welded to Chris, playing up and down the clothes, the hair, the shotgun. He smiled and the scar tissue tugged at his face. ‘Who are we? We’re the fucking dispossessed, mate. That’s who we are.’
There was no laughter to follow this time. The men had tautened, waiting for the leash to slip. Chris suppressed another cough and lifted the Remington as convincingly as he could manage.
‘That’s close enough. The police are on their way, and there’s nothing to see here.’