I always hated the rain. Ever since I was a kid. You’d be trying to sleep, and there’d be the constant patter of raindrops on the roof, the window, everywhere, all around you. They said some people found it relaxing. Well, good for them. I guess I’d hate that Chinese water torture stuff.
That was the first thing I noticed when I woke, the rain pattering on the car. Pissed me off. The second thing was the guy swinging hammers in my head. It felt like he’d landed a glancing blow on my neck while he was at it.
My eyes drifted open. Sometimes in movies when they’ve been knocked out they take a few minutes to work out what happened. Not for me, though, not this time. I must’ve only been out a few seconds. And I remembered everything. In crystal clear motherfucking high definition.
The car was tilted over to the right, on account of the ditch I’d found myself in. I’d been caught by one of the few trees Tempest hadn’t knocked down on his way through here. The whole rear passenger door behind me was caved in by the tree trunk. Rain was leaking in through the shattered window. If I’d hit the tree at a slightly different angle, I’d probably have a broken neck. Wasn’t I just the luckiest son of a bitch?
I peered through the spider-webbed windshield in the direction I thought was west. The left window wiper was stuck in position halfway along the windshield; the right one had snapped off. The engine ticked and groaned. Between the cracked windshield and the forest, I couldn’t see shit. I couldn’t hear shit either. Nothing except the fucking rain.
My head was thick and heavy, like it was filled with unset concrete. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Bad idea. The hammer guy behind my eyes started pounding even harder. My own words to Curtis at Psi Division drifted back to me.
Are you going to get her that Panadol or what? Can’t you see she’s suffering?
Why the hell was I thinking about that? There was a Mayday on the loose. And Healy was out here somewhere. He couldn’t be far. Tempest was near here when I’d seen him pick up the car. I had to find it. And then…
…then I didn’t know. Get to the port, maybe, or the airstrip, get off the island. Pray Tempest didn’t follow. At least he wasn’t like Serraton or Grotesque. They loved to hunt boats.
Quit wasting time. I wiped the sticky blood from my head, unbuckled my seatbelt, and leaned over to snap open the glove box. I hesitated, then took out the handgun box. I unlocked it and weighed the revolver in my hands. It almost made me laugh, the size of it. Tempest had shrugged off bunker busters, MOABs, once even a 25 megatonne H-bomb. The footage had been broadcast on the public television when I was in the refugee town. The Alliance had dropped the bomb from a high altitude stealth bomber as Tempest strode across the Algerian desert on his course for Morocco. The aerial footage showed Tempest glance up as the bomb screamed down towards him. Then it detonated. The explosion turned the whole screen white for a long time, I couldn’t tell you how long exactly. We were all standing there, watching the screen, waiting. It cleared slowly. And there was Tempest, curled up in a ball. We held our breath. And then his legs began to unfold. He stood up, stared directly at the camera. And he roared.
And here I was, feeding rounds into this tiny revolver. Well, to hell with it. Tempest wasn’t the only thing I might need to use it on. The port wasn’t equipped for a panicked evacuation of the whole city. This gun might be the only thing guaranteeing me a ticket out of here.
There was a flash of light against the sky. A few moments later, something boomed in the distance. My mouth went dry. It had started. I swallowed and went back to rummaging through the glove box, looking for anything that might be useful. I took a tiny first aid kit, the kind that you put in your car to make yourself feel better even though you know if you get in a real crash a couple of Band Aids and an alcohol swab aren’t going to help you put your brains back inside your head. I found a small torch as well. By some miracle, the batteries weren’t dead. That was everything. There wasn’t even a bottle of water in the car. Screw it, I could always drink the rain.
A thought hit me. The walkie-talkie. Where was it? I’d left it on the centre console, I knew I had. Where the hell had it gone? I reached over to the floor of the passenger seat—nothing. Under the seat, maybe. I tried under my seat, then under the passenger seat. My fingers closed on something plastic and rectangular. Yes. I pulled it out from under the seat and held it to my mouth. I depressed the button. Nothing, no beep. I switched the frequency knob back and forth. It wasn’t doing shit. I turned it over. The casing was completely busted. Wires hung loose and a small circuit board was cracked. The crash had killed it.
I screamed at it and slammed it on the steering wheel. The casing cracked further and the whole back fell off. I slammed it down again and again until its innards hung out like a gutted pig. Piece of shit. Goddamn it.
I took a few deep breaths. My head throbbed. I had to keep moving. I put the first aid kit and the torch in my left pocket and the gun in my right, along with the rest of the ammo.
I tried to open the driver’s door, but the frame was so bent out of shape it wouldn’t budge. I climbed over the centre console, cursing the weight I’d put on in the last few months, and jiggled open the passenger door. As soon as I’d opened it a crack, the wind caught it and flung it wide. Rain poured in. The tilt of the car made it a bitch to climb out. I wriggled out until my shoes sank into the mud. Needles of rain stung the cut on the side of my head. I pushed the pain aside and clambered up the slippery side of the ditch, back to the road. At least the mud covered Cunningham’s blood and the slivers of flesh still clinging to the fabric of my coat.
Panting, I finally made it onto the road. The wind whistled down the road, between the trees and the devastation. Another boom sounded somewhere over the city, followed by a crashing, crunching sound. Dizziness gripped me as I began to walk down the centre of the road towards the sound. No. No time to stop. I had to find Healy. I clung to that thought. Find Healy.
I shone the torch’s beam ahead of me as I stumbled down the road. The rain caught the light like fragments of glass. I felt like I was walking through a booze dream, like I used to have in my youth before I gave up the drink. None of this seemed possible. I didn’t know why I was still walking, what I hoped to find. But my feet kept going.
I didn’t even notice the cracks in the road until I stepped right on one and nearly broke my ankle. I blinked and shone the light around. The road was shattered, cracks radiating out from a central point, like a meteor had hit it. One of Tempest’s feet. I stepped over the cracks and kept going. Twenty metres down the road I found a car’s wing mirror. I looked around. There were three huge gouge marks in the road. Claw marks. My heart rate sped up. He’d been here. This was where Tempest picked up the car. But where had he tossed it?
I went to the edge of the road and shone the torch through the trees in the direction I thought Tempest had hurled the car. The light glinted off something metallic deeper in the forest.
“Healy!” I yelled. No answer. I scrambled off the road and slid down into the ditch. “Healy, I’m here! Can you hear me?”
I fought through the thick undergrowth towards the car. I couldn’t see anything moving inside. My foot caught a root and I tumbled into the mud. I pulled myself up and crawled for the car.
Somehow the car had landed on its wheels, but it wasn’t happy about it. The frame was crumpled. It looked like the suspension was completely broken. I was approaching from the passenger’s side. Through the shattered side window I could see a figure slumped against the wheel. Bits of tree branches clung to the doors and the fenders. It looked like it’d come down through the forest canopy. Healy had been lucky that the car hadn’t got stuck in a tree.
My light flashed across a set of shoeprints in the mud, leading away from the car. There were only a handful before they disappeared beneath the undergrowth.
I reached the car and scrambled around to the driver’s side. The driver’s door was lying loose in the undergrowth next to the car. There was a hole in the roof the shape of Tempest’s claw. Rain poured in the hole, dribbling onto Healy’s head.
“Healy.” I shone my torch in his face. His normally dark skin was grey. His eyes were closed. There was a cut on his cheek and it looked like his nose was broken. The car was filled with the iron smell of blood. “I got you, pal.”
I glanced in the back. The passenger door was lying open. Priya was nowhere to be seen. Those must’ve been her footprints. No matter. The important thing now was to get Healy out of here.
His eyes remained closed. I reached in, tapped his cheek. His skin was cold and damp with rainwater. “Come on, we have to go. Wake up.”
His eyelids drifted slowly open. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank Christ you’re alive,” I said. “I thought…never mind. Are you hurt?”
His gaze tracked towards me. His lips moved slightly, but no words came out. One arm was tangled in the steering wheel, the other hung limply in his lap.
“Healy?”
His eyelids slipped closed again. Jesus, he wasn’t doing good. He must’ve hit his head worse than I thought. We had to get to—where? A hospital? There were still crashes and booms coming from the city.
No. I had to take him to Psi Division. They had basic medical facilities, and they were closer. It wasn’t ideal, but it’d have to do.
I reached in to unbuckle his seatbelt. That’s when I realised his leg was missing.
No, not missing. It was there, severed at the hip, dangling by a few strands of muscle and tendon. Blood pooled around the pedals.
I staggered back and emptied my stomach onto the ground, clutching a tree for dear life. The heaving forced my eyes closed, and when I closed them I saw Healy’s leg, which made me heave all over again.
Get it together. I exhaled, forcing my stomach back down where it belonged. I spat out the acid taste, wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve, and turned back to the car. Healy’s eyes were open again. He looked up at me, through me.
“It’s okay,” I rasped, more for myself than him. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
I kept my gaze on Healy’s face as I reached in again and unbuckled the seatbelt. Healy didn’t react as I lifted his arm to get him free of the belt.
“All right, this might hurt a bit,” I said. I leaned in, tucked my arms under his shoulders, and tugged him out. Christ, he was heavy. The severed leg came with him, dangling. I tried not to look at it. Panting, I pulled him out and laid him down as gently as I could on the forest floor.
Bleeding. Have to stop the bleeding. I pulled out the pathetic first aid kit, stared at it for a moment, and shoved it back in my pocket. I looked around, found a piece of twisted metal on the ground. I used it to extend the cut in the shoulder of my coat sleeve, then ripped the sleeve the rest of the way off.
Kneeling, I tore the sleeve into strips and wrapped it around the stump of Healy’s leg. There was barely anything left, barely anything for the makeshift tourniquet to grip. I pulled it up as high as I could and tied it tight. It was still bleeding, but maybe it was less, I couldn’t tell. Maybe he’d already lost most of his blood. I didn’t know.
How far away was Psi Division? A couple of miles? I couldn’t carry Healy all that way on my back. I looked around. My eyes fell on the car door that’d broken off. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would have to do.
I dragged the door alongside Healy. Tying a few of the strips of my coat sleeve around the snapped hinges, I fashioned a simple sled out of it.
“All right, here we go,” I said to Healy. I grabbed him again and dragged him onto the door. I studied his severed leg and chewed my lip. We couldn’t afford the weight. Besides, it wasn’t like we were going to be able to reattach it. Swallowing my nausea, I bent down and used the piece of twisted metal to cut through the remaining flesh connecting his hip to the leg.
I could feel myself sweating, but the rain washed it away as fast as it came. After a few seconds, the leg came free. I dropped the metal and quickly wiped my hands on my coat.
“You’re going to have to hold on, Healy.” I took his hands and closed them around the edges of the door. “Just like that. Okay, here we go.”
I took the strips in either hand and pulled. My muscles ached at the strain. But after a moment the sled started to slide.
“Easy,” I said. “Hold on tight.” I pulled him behind me, dragging him back towards the road.
It was hard going. The forest was thick, the ground uneven and slick with mud. I kept slipping and catching the sled on roots and undergrowth. I was panting by the time we emerged from the forest, back to the ditch on the side of the road. I went along the ditch a few metres until I found the place where the slope was shallowest, then dragged him up onto the road. I felt him start to slip, so I turned and grabbed him by the collar with one hand as I pulled the sled with the other.
Finally, I managed to drag him up onto the road. I sat there breathing heavily for a moment. I’d kill for a smoke. But there wasn’t time to stop. I stood, took hold of the sled, and kept dragging.
The scraping of the door on the road was loud in the early evening. Almost loud enough to shut out the distant sounds of destruction and roaring.
“Hey,” I said over my shoulder. “You want to know something stupid? About a year ago, a few months before Volkov came knocking, I was thinking of giving up the detective business. It was something I’d been mulling over for a couple of years, but I was getting ready to just shut up shop and quit completely. It was the people, I think. You know what it’s like. When you’re a private detective you deal with a lot of arseholes. Cheaters. Worse, their jealous spouses. Criminals. I did a bit of work for defence teams. These guys—and girls—most of them were guilty as all hell. Rapists, robbers, sons of bitches who’d gotten into an argument over nothing and ended up caving their best friend’s head in with a ball-peen hammer. Real salt of the earth types.”
An explosion sounded somewhere in the distance. A moment later, Tempest’s victorious roar echoed over the hills. The clouds were turning orange. Fire in the city. I closed my eyes and kept dragging the sled.
“I had this fantasy—you’ll laugh when you hear this—I had this fantasy of becoming a truck driver after I quit. No shit. I mean, what the hell do I know about driving trucks?” I shook my head. “But I could never get it out of my head. It seemed like a good job. Honest. I don’t know what I’d do with an honest job, but there you go. But that’s not the whole fantasy. There’s this little town I know of, the sort of place you drive through, not to. You never would’ve heard of it. Anyway, there’s this cafe in the town—it’s pretty much the only thing there—and they make the best goddamn custard tart in the world. The other thing they have is this shelf of paperbacks—novels, you know—for customers to borrow and read. Now, I’ve read about two books my whole life since I left high school. But that’s beside the point. So here’s the fantasy. I’d be driving my truck on those long, lonely trips, and every time I went through that town I’d stop and go to that cafe. I’d get a coffee and a custard tart and I’d pick a book off the shelf. I’d sit there, eat my tart, drink my coffee, and—here’s what makes the fantasy—I’d read one chapter of the book. Just one chapter, no more. Then I’d put the book back on the shelf and be on my way. Next time I was driving through the town, I’d get a tart and a coffee and pick up that book and read the next chapter. And so on and so on.”
A gust of wind blew down the road, lashing my face with rain. I paused, shielding my face with my remaining coat sleeve, until the wind died down again. I wiped my face dry and kept walking.
“It’s a stupid fantasy, I know. But it made me happy when I thought about it, even though I knew I’d never do it. I just figured it’d be a comfort to know that no matter where on the road I was, there’d always be something permanent in the world. That book, that next chapter, in that cafe.” I laughed and shook my head. “How about that? Corny, right? I bet you’ve lost all respect for me now, huh, Healy. What do you say?”
But of course, Healy didn’t say anything. Because Healy was dead. He’d been dead since I’d pulled him out of the car.
I dragged Healy and the sled to the side of the road. I wasn’t going to leave him in the middle of the road for some panicking staff member in a car to run over. But I couldn’t drag him anymore. I wasn’t helping anyone.
Maybe I cried, I don’t know. If I did, the rain washed the tears away quickly. I rested his arms on his chest, closed his eyes. It was the best I could do. Then I reached into his coat pockets to see what he had on him.
His wallet. I returned it to his pocket. I found something plastic in his outer pocket. I pulled it out into the light. His walkie-talkie. I switched it on. Static came through. It was working.
I slipped the walkie into my pocket and stood over Healy’s body. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. What could I say that would make it better? What could I say that would strip away the guilt churning in my chest? Nothing. So I left him there and continued on down the road.
Fifteen minutes later the forest began to clear and the road began to rise. I followed it up. I could smell the salt of the sea now, and something thicker overlying it. Smoke, dust, fire, death. The rain lashed at me. I thrust my hands into my pockets, put my head down, and walked into the wind.
The rise topped out and the last of the trees gave way to grassland and rocky shores. I stopped, fished through my pockets, found the pack of Winfields I’d picked up at the hospital. I tore off the plastic, put a smoke between my lips, and cupped my hands around the lighter as I sparked the flame. I drew in a deep breath, thick with the smoke. It wasn’t as good as I remembered. But then, nothing ever was.
As I drew another lungful of smoke, I looked out over the scene of destruction laid before me. Tempest had crossed the water just down there, avoiding the bridge, taking a more direct route. I could follow where he made landfall again by the gouges carved in the quiet inlet beach favoured by sunbathers in nicer weather. The roads were cracked and broken where he’d headed inland. He hadn’t stopped to flatten the surrounding suburbs and apartment buildings, only those that had been in his way. No, he’d made his way straight for the centre of the city.
Tempest was lit now by the flames of the city. He stood tall, proud, towering over the smaller buildings. Where earlier he’d attacked with precision, first killing Cunningham and then Healy, now he was a force of nature, a hurricane, a typhoon. With a kind of noble assurance, he charged the Media Division building. From here it looked like he was moving in slow motion, but I knew that was only the sense of scale screwing with my head. Over there, underneath him, he’d be moving faster than anyone would think possible. I knew. I’d seen it.
His bulk collided with the Media Division building full on. The first thing to go was the glass. A thousand windows shattered at once, tiny specks of glass glittering as they fell around him. For a moment it looked like the building would hold. It was strong, solid, built to survive earthquakes, tsunamis, anything nature could throw at it. But this wasn’t natural.
The building seemed to bend at the centre, just a little. Then it cracked. The sound was delayed in reaching me, but I shuddered at the tortured groan of the dying tower. The cracks ran diagonally down, away from Tempest. It had only been a few seconds since Tempest had slammed into it, and he was still moving. He shoved, putting his shoulder into it, and the building finally gave.
The top went first, the upper fifteen or twenty floors. They began to topple, and as they collapsed onto the lower floors those gave way as well. Thick clouds of dust billowed out of the tower as it collapsed. It only took another few seconds. And then the entire Media Division building was rubble.
Tempest tilted back his head and roared. The screeching, echoing sound sent goosebumps running down my arms. My hands shook as I took another drag of the cigarette.
As Tempest’s roar died away, he lowered his head, looking around, as if for challengers. I could swear he could see me as his gaze slid across me. But that was just the fear talking.
An orange glow built in Tempest’s mouth, casting each of his jagged teeth into silhouette. He snarled, stood up straight, flicked his tail back and forth. Then he pointed himself at the ruined Media Division building and opened his mouth so wide it looked like his jaw must’ve snapped off.
A jet of thick fire poured from his mouth like water. The fire collided with the ruined building and exploded out in every direction, flowing down streets and billowing back into the air. The flames rained on the nearby city buildings, those that hadn’t already been destroyed. There were few left. Volkov’s tower was one of the last remaining buildings in the central city, with its swooping “V” atop its roof. Tempest closed his mouth, let the fire fade, before turning to Volkov Tower.
He’s saving it until last, I realised. He wants Volkov to see. Just like he wants me to see.
I finished my cigarette, stubbed it out on the ground. So that’s how it was going to be. Fine. I pulled Healy’s walkie-talkie out of my pocket and adjusted the dial to broadcast across all frequencies.
I depressed the button. “This is Escobar. Can anyone hear me?”
Silence, except for the crackle of static. I pressed the button again. “Repeat, this is Jay Escobar. Is anyone alive out there? Someone answer.”
Quiet. Then a voice. I could barely make it against the crackling. “Boss, Jesus. It’s Lindsey. You’re alive? I thought he must’ve got you at the pit. I tried to reach you, but I couldn’t get a response.”
“It’s good to hear your voice,” I said. “My walkie was out. I’m looking at the city now. Our building….”
“Gone. He tore straight through it. What the fuck happened, Boss? Why is he free?” Her voice was strained.
I didn’t have an answer for her. Was it me? Did I push Garcia too far? That shouldn’t have been enough to break impulse control. But then, what the hell did I know?
“Is Healy with you?” she asked.
I closed my eyes, opened them again. “No. No, he’s not.”
She understood. “Shit.”
“Who made it out of the building?”
“I was already out, heading back to Bio. I found Su-jin and Chiaki. Chiaki’s pretty badly burnt. I don’t know if she’ll make it.”
I tried not to picture Chiaki’s soft skin bubbled and blistered. “All right. Who else?”
A pause. “No one else, Boss. I mean, maybe some of them made it out, but I don’t think….” She sighed. “Maybe there’s some more in the rubble. But I don’t think anyone else survived.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure who I was nodding to. I watched Tempest across the city that separated us. That’s who I was nodding to. Tempest.
Okay. Okay. I get it now. You want me to hate you? Okay.
“Where are you, Boss? A security detail went to try to get Volkov out, but I haven’t been able to get in contact with them. I’m going to take the others to the port, get out of here. Can you make it to us?”
“You’re not going anywhere, Fischer.”
Tempest circled Volkov Tower, his tail flicking behind him. He casually sideswiped an adjacent office building and sent it tumbling to the ground.
“Boss?” Lindsey said. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re not done yet,” I said. “We have a job to do, Fischer.”
“Boss, we’ve got to get out of here. I have to get to my girlfriend. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. We have to get off the island. Can’t you see this? If he hits the ports we’ll be trapped here with him.”
“We’re already trapped,” I said. “We’re trapped until we finish our job. The best thing you can do to help your girlfriend is to do your goddamn job. We’re detectives, aren’t we? Aren’t we?” Silence on the other end. I smiled at the monster across the bay from me. “Someone killed Yllia. Killed her stone dead. We still have a job. Find her killer, find out how they killed her.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lindsey said. “What the hell does that matter anymore?”
“It matters,” I said, “because we’re going to use that information. Stay alive, solve the case. Because we’re going to kill him for this. For what he did to Healy, to Chiaki, to everyone. Tempest wants us to hate him. So we will. We’ll hate him. We’re going to find out his weakness. And we’re going to kill him.”
~~~
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