Gods and Monsters

VIII

John Adam St, London

The four perpetrators of the bomb in Trafalgar Square waited on the corner of the street for the white lorry they had tasked themselves with stopping. They realised that by now the bomb had gone off so they had to move quickly. The leader of the four, the White Widow – so called because of her white leather jumpsuit, emblazoned with a widow spider on the back – moved forwards to her position down a small alleyway and waited whilst the other Widows; Black, Red and Grey, got into their own respective places.

The white lorry swiftly pulled out and began its drive to the main road so it could re-join the traffic which was just beginning to move once again. The driver, seeing an opening, pressed his foot hard on the accelerate pedal wanting to dispose of the lorries contents as soon as he could, but he was suddenly halted by a metal spike strip flying across the road from a dark alley. The lorry skidded along for a few more moments as the driver desperately tried to keep control of the vehicle before it found itself wrapped around a lamppost.

The driver touched his forehead and found a small amount of blood dripping down his face from where he had smacked against the dashboard. He grabbed a few tissues from a box on the dashboard, wiping his face in an attempt to clear the blood away from his face and eyes so he could see what had happened, and check on the status of the package.

Stumbling out of the door, the driver didn't have much time to react as he found a wire wrapped around his foot, pulling him to the floor with the last thing he saw before he slipped into unconsciousness being the slender figure of a women, dressed in a red jumpsuit with a matching red motorcycle helmet disguising her identity, moving towards the back of the lorry.

Peggy, Charlie, Mike and Atlin quickly rounded the corner to see the crashed lorry and the Widows as they moved round to the back of the lorry.

"Police! Freeze!" Peggy called out. She realised she probably should have called armed response, but with the lack of time and the only just clearing traffic, there was little chance of them making it here in time. The Widows looked over at the task force before the one dressed in black raised an assault rifle and sprayed a bombardment of shots towards the team forcing them to duck back behind the wall. Peggy wasn't a fan of police in other countries using guns, but right then she really wished she had some form of defence. The bullets continued to smack into the wall next to them, most likely as a suppression technique so that they wouldn't be able to stop whatever it was the Widows were planning on doing.

The White Widow broke the lock on the lorry, opening up the large metal doors to find a nearly naked man sitting in the back, chained to a railing. His skin pulsated and grew rapidly before returning to its natural state and repeating again and again. The man was clearly in pain, by the way he groaned each time, and the train track of needle marks up his arm showed that this likely wasn't a natural reaction; he had been experimented on.

"Please..." He panted between mutations. "Please...You have to help me!" The man's arm grew even larger this time, causing his wrists to bleed as they embedded themselves in the chain around them. The Widows didn't say anything as they stood just outside the door. Then very simply, each one lifted a gun and unleashed their ammo into the unarmed, defenceless man, painting the interior of the lorry a crimson red. His body shrank down to its usual size once again as the Widows made their way to a nearby parked Porsche and sped away.

It was only then that Peggy realised where she had seen the Black Widow before, and she suddenly felt sick. The Black Widow had been the figure in Nick's garden just after Peggy had found him bleeding out. The leather jumpsuit and helmet were exactly the same, Peggy just hadn't been able to see that his murderer had been female at the time. It surely had to be more than a coincidence. Peggy had to pull herself together now and moved towards the back of the lorry to see what exactly they had been shooting at.

The scene was barbaric. The man had been torn apart from head to toe, his body ripped to shreds by a volley of bullets, with not a single missed shot. Unfortunately over the last few weeks, this was a scene Peggy and the others were becoming more and more familiar with. They moved back from the large white doors so as to not contaminate the scene further, and also so they didn't have to see the poor man's corpse any longer.

"Lucky they didn't get a better shot at us." Charlie said in an attempt to break the silence that had encompassed them all as they moved away from the lorry.

Atlin looked at the wall they had been hiding behind a just moment before. "I'm not sure they even wanted to hit us."

The others all turned to look at the wall with her and saw that the bullet holes that had been engraved into the wall now made a widow spider like the one that had adorned each women's jumpsuits. One thing was for sure, this wasn't likely to be the last the group heard of the Widows. They moved over to a nearby wall and perched themselves up against it as they waited for EMTs to arrive and clean up the scene. 

Continued in Part 9...