Underworld mousebane and.., p.10
Underworld (Mousebane & Red Mist Book 3), page 10
A dark, broad shape moved between the furthest table and the oven.
It hummed.
Dan stepped into the room past the first table. He traced the wood with trawling fingers. Found a familiar flaw. His initials, DD, scratched with a compass into the dark desktop in his final year of school. How was this here?
Curiosity caught him and he reached up to touch the nearest flask where purple liquid simmered. Bubbles mesmerised, rising in the shape of a double-helix.
“I wouldn’t.”
The voice held power. Once upon a time Dan had taken several singing lessons to try and improve his backing vocals for the band. The teacher had told him he held a lot of tension in his larynx due to the way he spoke, and the way he spoke was often a disguise to the way he felt. It’d take practice and patience for him to bring his voice back to how it should be. Practice he hadn’t put in. Patience he didn’t have. The speaker sounded how he imagined he might if he had.
“Don’t want to end up like George Shields,” it said.
“Do you mean old?” asked Dan.
“I mean scaly. Not that there’s anything wrong with scaly, but I guess Amy wouldn’t be so keen. And we’d look a little odd pushing the pram with the body of a dinosaur. People might chase us with the modern equivalent of pitchforks and that wouldn’t end well.”
“Is that phones? The modern equivalent of pitchforks.”
“We know it is. Everything’s a show. Everything for little red hearts or little white thumbs. Even suffering.”
“Is that what we’re going to talk about?” Dan stepped closer. The shape shifted, silhouetted in the flame. Red eyes peered at him from behind the bubbling chemistry set, distorted by the rounded glass. The Reptile stood about his height. In fact, Dan knew, his height exactly.
“No, but it’s something that bothers us.”
It was, amongst other things.
“Are you me?” Dan continued forward, rounding the last table.
The Reptile stood on two legs. It wore a pair of brown dungarees over a white linen shirt. Sleeves rolled up to its elbows. A long black tail, roughly its height again, dragged behind it on the flagstones of the floor. It’s short snout snaggletoothed and black.
“Not really. But we inhabit the same space. Now at least.” It held a small clay figurine in one claw and a sharp curved sculpting tool in the other. It scooped a chunk off the head and stuck it to the chest. Dan’s hair tingled and he coughed as his heart skipped a beat.
“Have you always been with me?”
The Reptile hummed. Not musical now. Thoughtful. Its concentration still on the figure. “I don’t think so. I think I came from somewhere else. Somewhere far away, but before we came together I didn’t have the capacity to understand. I was different. I’m figuring it out. I haven’t lived for long. And most of that time I’ve been stuck in that room behind the door.” Red eyes caught Dan’s briefly and it pointed a claw past him towards the pool. “Why did you lock me away? I thought I’d helped you. I thought we were together.” Its voice lowered. Was it sad?
“I didn’t. That was Martin.”
“Oh.” It chuckled. “What a prick.”
The Reptile didn’t look up again from the figure. Dan could tell it was no longer working on it, but pretending to focus on the clay instead of meeting his eye. Something he might have done.
A reticent turn of the head, then, “Did you end him in the end?”
“He’s in jail.”
The Reptile shrugged. “That fits us. And what about the others? The Disappearing Woman? The nerd?”
“We’ve left them behind. I’m hoping they don’t know how to find us.”
The Reptile met his eye. “They’ll always know, they just might not want or need to. We must be on the lookout, always. They lied to us, you know?”
“I know, but how do you?”
“I’m not a reptile. I only look this way because that’s how you picture me after what he told you. He didn’t make me. Perhaps changed me a little to suit his purpose. No one made me. Not really.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m still discovering.”
“What have you discovered?”
“That I’m just a symbiont, standing in front of a host, asking him to love me.”
Dan snorted. “Like Venom?”
“I’m nothing like Venom.”
“I distinctly remember you suggested I scoop someone’s eyes out with a spoon, that’s pretty Venomous.”
“Hey, I was young and going through a phase. You used to wear Adidas popper trousers and listen to ‘Blue Da Ba Dee’ on repeat. It’s the same thing.”
“Is it?”
“Marvel haven’t got the monopoly on mutually beneficial partnerships where something gets inside someone and talks to them and makes them do things that are against their normal character. You can’t trademark a natural phenomenon.”
Dan raised his eyebrows. “Pretty sure they’d like to though.”
The Reptile nodded.
“What is this place?” Dan took in the back of the room. The oven was cavernous. Similar to one in a pizzeria on Walton high street. “Where are we?”
“The workshop of your mind.”
“And what are you making there?” He pointed at the figure in the Reptile’s hands.
The Reptile held it up.
“This is supposed to be you, but you know what, I don’t know what it is you want. You have no clear aim. It’s like you’re meandering from this to that.”
The Reptile swam a clawed hand from side to side, the motion hypnotising like a snake in water.
“That first night we were together, you wanted one thing, to save her, and I did the best I could. Now you’re torn. You want to keep her safe so you don’t want to leave her or go out anywhere with her, but you want to have fun because life can change for the worse at any moment and you don’t want to waste it. You want to create wonderful art, but you’re growing resentful of music. You want to be with people like you. You want to be alone.” He placed the figure on the table next to an empty beaker. “You’ve fallen into a groove but not one you’ve chosen. What is it you want?”
Dan opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. The conversation he’d had with Dizz at the Fuzzy Barista flashed through his mind.
“Oh, I see,” said the Reptile. “To be truly known. To be seen.”
“Were those words you trying to get out?” said Dan.
“Maybe. But that need has been inside of you for longer than I’ve been around.”
“I guess.” Dan glanced around the room. “And I guess there’s nothing you can do about it trapped in here.”
“Not from in here.” The Reptile smiled, black teeth jutting in all directions. “But you’ll never be truly known if you hide parts of yourself away. You must have courage and hope. If others accept what you are, great, if not fuck ’em.”
“I guess that’s an OK way to be as long as you’re not a serial killer.”
“You’re not a serial killer.”
“What are you, really?”
“I’d like to know.”
How did it not know? How would they find out? Would they ever?
“Are we trapped here?” said Dan, raising his hands to indicate the room.
“I have been, but something you saw tonight has weakened whatever Martin did to us. This was only a matter of time. You have a lot of brittle edges. Things are moving again out there.”
Dan closed his eyes and tried to remember the last thing he’d seen. Two figures in the darkness. Oh!
He’d seen them and a voice had spoken inside his head. You gonna be the hero?
“I thought someone was doing it in the allotment like in my neighbour’s garden when I was younger. I thought I was back there.”
“I know. You were wrong, but the mind does funny things with minimal information. It fills in gaps. It opened this pathway for me to go deeper.”
“So am I unconscious somewhere?”
“Amy takes us to Walton. I think she hopes the Flash can wake you. He probably will but not before I’ve had time to move a few things around in here.”
The ground suddenly shook. Dust billowed down from the ceiling, the fire sputtered, pressure gauges flipped momentarily into the red, before everything calmed again.
The Reptile glanced up at the ceiling as if the sudden change was no surprise. “Returning worries you, doesn’t it?”
“Everything worries me.” He pictured her as he’d last seen her. Her face hidden in shadow. “She worries me. Pippa and Simon worry me. The future worries me. You worry me.”
“Why me? I’m fine.”
“And now here we are heading back.”
“We can’t run for ever. One day soon we’ll have to make a stand and that’ll be easier to do before the baby comes than after. Everything happening here and now is required. Don’t worry, we are together again. Our stand will be bloody and it will be glorious.”
Dan didn’t speak.
The Reptile rolled its eyes as the pressure gauges ticked up once more into the red. “That’s worried you, hasn’t it?”
He could only offer a strained smile.
“Such a fucking pansy.”
Flash Finding Mission
“Do you remember, Dan?” said Amy.
She’d spent the three-and-a-half-hour journey talking through her favourite moments spent with him, hoping something might bring him back around.
He remained unresponsive.
Catman slept, snuggled in his lap. It was alright for some. She was shattered. Had only stopped once at the halfway point for a packet of cheese and onion and a decaf triple shot americano in the hope that the flavour might trick her brain into thinking it had been caffeinated. She hadn’t touched a drop yet, service station coffee coming at you hotter than fresh magma.
“You said it wouldn’t be the best day of your life, you said every day would just get better and better.” She sighed. He’d been right. There were ups and there were downs, but overall their arc was up, up, up. “You’re quite good at words if you have time in advance, you know? Can you wake up and say something now? Anything?”
She checked the Flash’s location. She’d come to a point not far from the carwash where he’d been, but he was no longer there. He’d moved to some industrial estate near the river. Probably the Baliks’ hideout or something. Why was it always an industrial estate? She recalibrated maps.
Ten minutes later, she pulled into an old car park by a huge warehouse. A railway bridge loomed behind. The place was deserted. The warehouse dark within.
She parked a little distance away and waited with one eye on the warehouse door and another on the Flash’s tracker. His little icon was right in the centre of the grey mass that was the warehouse. Could he have come here alone somehow? If it wasn’t anything to do with the Baliks, there had to be something important inside, something new. Maybe a clue to what had happened to them. Otherwise why had he come? And why hadn’t he told them he was leaving?
She took out her phone and called Andrew. His chirpy voice told her to leave a message. She hung up with a grumble.
When nothing happened after another few minutes, she woke Catman. His head came up and he immediately jumped onto the dashboard to look through the windscreen. She opened her door and he hopped out ahead of her, scampering towards the warehouse. He was fast. He paused in the doorway, head bobbing, then returned to her.
“Is he there?” she said, climbing out.
Her breath clouded before her. The distant grunt of the city beyond the river heightened her isolation. She’d never been near here.
Catman darted a little way back towards the building then looked over his shoulder, wanting her to follow.
The looming dirt-hued warehouse with its smashed windows and colourful (but distasteful) graffiti didn’t look overly inviting. This was the sort of place you came if you hoped on getting murdered, but also probably the sort of place where no one (not even murderers) went and so the least likely place you’d actually get murdered.
Could it house another secret entrance to some underground facility like the sealed off one back in the Fleetwood Estate near home?
Should she go in? Did she have a choice if the Flash could help Dan?
She studied him. Eyes still closed, but no longer shaking. She reached across and patted his leg. She’d be careful. Any sign of trouble and she’d run.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
She climbed out and whispered for Catman to wait for her, then hurried around to the back of the van and grabbed two stalks of sprouts. She wasn’t entirely sure what she would do with them. Everyone knew that if you walked confidently into a music venue holding a guitar, or in fact anywhere with a hard hat and a clipboard, people just let you go about your business. Sprout stalks could be a similar access-all-areas item. Only someone who was supposed to be there, and knew what they were doing, would head into an abandoned warehouse by the river at night carrying stalks of sprouts. Either that or a madwoman. Perhaps the belief that she was a crazy sprout woman would be a deterrent to anyone willing to attack her.
Catman slunk ahead as she hurried across the car park towards the warehouse. She followed him in. She thought she heard the quiet rumble of an engine somewhere inside. The only sound.
Catman’s claws made no noise as he stalked across the open space towards a hulking machine in the centre. Green paint peeled where it hadn’t rusted. No idea what it had once been. Other smaller machines made up a row. She followed Catman, quiet and slow, avoiding clumps of crumbled concrete that might trip her or make a sound.
A man spoke, low and rasping. Something clunked.
She eased to the edge of the machine and spotted the man the two squirrels had brought to her house. The hitman.
The Flash lay at his feet. He sprung up when he saw her and Catman hiding, then froze, one paw in mid-step. The drone didn’t seem to notice her. His arms hung limp at his side, his head back, like a bored schoolboy hanging off his chair at the back of algebra, or Dan at dinner with her parents. Something shifted under his white jacket.
The Flash glanced at something out of Amy’s view, then back at her. He licked his nose, then trotted up to and past her and Catman without stopping. She followed him with her gaze. Catman chased after. They both stopped midway between the machine and the entrance and looked back. She knew that look, it said “follow us”. She hurried after and they continued towards the door.
When she reached a little over the halfway point, headlights shone from outside through the high windows. Shadows stretched across the ceiling like extending claws. Tyres screeched to a halt. Doors slammed. She looked for somewhere to hide but found herself in the open with nowhere to go.
This was unlike her. This was reckless. This was stupid. The idea of a quest had seemed so exciting. She’d been bored out of her mind back in Totnes. She’d not been out since they’d moved. Not even to the shops. Ordering in every time they needed something. Dan monitoring her every move. Watching her from his window. Jumping at every car that passed on the road. She loved him, and she understood his worry, but he’d become a little controlling.
Stealing vegetables from the allotment was something to fill that void. Her Reptile had goaded her into it. And tonight, the sudden buzz of having someone to save had charged her, and sent her on a mad four-hour journey to Walton, and right into this, whatever this was.
She had the Flash now. They just had to find a way out.
Loud voices, animated and arguing, neared. Three figures formed in the doorway. They wore tracksuits. Two men. One woman. The woman was doing something on her phone, head down and engaged, shuffling behind the men who strode towards where Amy stood, arms wide like their backs were too big for their bodies.
Amy had seen enough men argue to realise that these two were faking it to appear more imposing to either the woman behind them, or whoever they’d come to meet, like they couldn’t care less about anything. They looked like the boys from the clubs who would beat someone up for a glance. The ones that would get shit-faced and, elbow clamped around your neck, spray spit all over the side of your face as they shouted whatever rubbish they thought was currently important into your ear in a bid to get you into bed.
Twats.
And twats are easy to confuse.
Twats were.
She raised her sprouts, lowered her head, and bustled forwards. They stopped their arguing. She glanced up. The men were staring at her. An even deeper frown had infested one’s face. The other looked mindless, dangerously so. The woman didn’t look up from her phone.
This had to be the deal that Sternberg had mentioned. She’d stumbled right into the middle of it. Shit. She glanced back. Was Kyle back there with the Baliks and the drone? Why was the Flash here? Were they using him for their scheme?
She improvised.
“Alright,” said Amy. “You here then?”
“Who the fuck are you?” said Frown Face.
“They’re just over there,” she said, pointing one of her stalks in the direction of the drone. “You’re late.”
She presumed that would be accurate.
The woman didn’t look up from whatever she was doing. “Barely,” she said. “Five minutes is hardly what I’d call late.” She finished and tucked her phone away. She had the darkest eyes Amy had ever seen. They were bottomless pits. She leant her head to one side. “I don’t know you.”
The Flash and Catman watched from behind them.
“I’m just the lookout,” she said and shook her sprouts. “Crazy sprout lady in the car park. Now excuse me, I best be getting back on duty.”
