Quantum of nightmares, p.36
Quantum of Nightmares, page 36
“We’re going to put down a mad bitch who thinks she can hijack the Church of the Mute Poet out from under me before I can round them all up and set fire to them. Assuming she’s where the rot starts—it may go higher. Then we’re going to rescue the children they kidnapped.”
“Yeah, and what’s that about?” Game Boy chirped. “Why would she do that?”
“They’re metahumans. Probably powerful ones, going by their parents. You can capture mana from a human sacrifice, and you get a lot more mana if your victim is a sorcerously endowed adept—a transhuman, in other words. Rupert was experimenting with mass human sacrifice—I’m pretty sure that’s why he was trying to buy FlavrsMart—but quality has a quantity all of its own. There are probably some other angles as well but I can’t be bothered untangling them all while we’re running down the clock.”
The SUV came to a dead stop in one corner of the car park and the engine stilled. A steel gate at one side opened onto a goods area. Steel roller shutters blocked access to the loading docks. A second SUV rolled up behind them. The doors opened and four heavies in identical suits and dark glasses climbed out. One of them opened the trunk and began to distribute the tools of the trade: anti-stab vests, pistols, wards strung on necklaces.
“Issue banishment rounds, two mags each,” Eve told the armorer. To the other heavies she added, “Don’t waste them, each round costs fifty quid. They should work first time, no need to double-tap. You, you, and you, these are Jeremy, Doc, and Game Boy: Jeremy’s an influencer, Doc is a projective empath specializing in negative emotions, and Game Boy can dodge bullets. Guard them, they’re your ticket out of here if things break bad. Imp, Doc? If you see the priestess, her name’s Jennifer Henderson, she’s an HR manager, and she’s at least a level two practitioner, maybe three—hit her with everything you’ve got and don’t stop until she’s down. Everyone: you’re going to see some really unpleasant things in here. Don’t let it get to you. Remember most of the opposition aren’t human any more, and the company health plan will cover your therapy.”
“Isn’t this a job for the government?” Game Boy asked before Doc could put a hand over his mouth.
Eve’s face was stony. “If the government start lifting carpet corners and peering underneath before I’ve cleaned house there’s no telling what they’ll find, and none of us want that. Vicky, George, if you would be so good as to make a forced entry, please? Don’t worry about damage, I closed on a controlling stake in FlavrsMart this morning.” George nodded, then leaned into the back and hauled out a steel battering ram.
The concrete steps up to the loading dock were unguarded but Eve went first, chanting a monotone in a language with far too many gutturals and clicks for a human larynx. A faint glow surrounded her fingertips as she waved them in front of her face. “Clear,” she said tersely, then stepped aside as Vicky and Bill took up positions beside a door to one side of the shutters while George swung the ram.
The lock shattered and an alarm began to bleep. The door crashed open to reveal a twilit concrete tunnel instead of a loading bay—obviously some kind of emergency exit. “Hey, we get to LARP Resident Evil! I got this!” Game Boy stepped up before Imp could stop him, then skipped forward and bolted out of sight around a corner. “Clear!” he trilled.
“Shit.” His assigned bodyguard dashed after him, pistol drawn. Imp made to move forward but his own muscle held up a beefy arm. “Over my dead body,” the goon grunted, “or Miss Starkey’ll have my head.”
“Ladies first—” Imp said as Eve pushed past the guard and entered the corridor. Her face was eerily underlit: after a moment Imp realized that her pearl choker was glowing, ripples of amethyst and turquoise light chasing around it. With the part of his mind’s eye that was still magically inclined he beheld the power and majesty of a sorcerer of House Starkey: Eve had dropped her pretense of normality and stepped out of the shadows. “Go on! Move!” He pushed, and the guard’s mind gave way like damp cardboard under the wheels of a bus, for Imp was not without power of his own. They followed Eve, and Doc and his bodyguard took up the rear.
“Up here!” Game Boy’s voice echoed down a narrow stairwell with white-painted cinder block walls. They pounded up the steps after him and came to a maze of cramped offices.
“Oh crap!” Game Boy’s bodyguard bellowed. “Get on the ground! You! Get on the—”
A gunshot reverberated through the offices, followed by a shrill scream of fear and loathing.
Imp followed his sister into a break room where Game Boy huddled in a corner behind an overturned sofa, while his guard faced off against a human-shaped sausage-skin held together with duct tape and nylon straps. Its face was obscured by some sort of plastic mask displaying an approximation of a human face, the color balance all wrong and the features uncoordinated. “Intruder. Intruder. Intruder,” it intoned as it tried to get around the sofa. There was a bullet hole in the figure’s back, and it was leaking something pink and disgustingly bloodless that resembled raw mincemeat. Game Boy’s guard raised his gun and fired again, this time hitting it right in the middle of the forehead. It staggered, then leaned forward and tried to grab the pistol.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Eve said exasperatedly, then pointed a finger at it: “Die, already!”
The muppet collapsed, not falling but sagging and distorting as the contents of the meatsack lost cohesion and fell into its legs and abdomen, head deflating like a leaky balloon.
“Did you not swap out your magazine for banishment rounds?” she scolded, hands on hips.
The guard looked sheepish. “But you said they was expen—”
“There is expensive and then there is needlessly paying for your funeral,” Eve snapped. An immediate ratchet and clatter of magazines being ejected and replaced signalled that the message had gotten across.
“What is it?” Imp leaned over the body-shaped meatsack. Opening his inner eye, he blinked painfully and looked. “Is that—”
“Mechanically reclaimed beef and pork scraps.” Eve’s tone was one of prim disapproval. “I’d estimate maybe ten percent human meat by weight. Minimum viable human sacrifice to animate a, a mincemeat golem, I think you could reasonably call it.” She glanced around her audience. “There will be more of these things. They’re akin to zombies, only not exactly. A banishment round should take them down, but do not, repeat not, let them grab hold of you or make direct skin contact with the effluvium. Your wards might save you but you shouldn’t rely on them.”
“What now, Miss?” asked Game Boy’s guard, suitably chastened but tooled up with ammunition that might actually work against a paranormal adversary.
“We search this shop for Ms. Henderson. Who, incidentally, made these things,” she pointed at the fallen muppet, “using my company resources, which I take a very dim view of—it’s unsanitary—on company time. You may find my brother’s friend Rebecca in company with a HiveCo Security investigator called Wendy—they’re friendly, trust Imp, Doc, and Game Boy for identification. If you find four rather frightened children who may or may not be dressed as Terrortots, call me. They’re probably locked up somewhere and they’re dangerous metahumans so do not scare them: just call me. Oh, and if you find any more meat golems, drop them.”
“I think—” Game Boy zoned out for a few seconds, then shook his head—“I can’t find any kids? There are some more golems on the shop floor, there are some golems and human beings in the loading bay, but I can’t get a route to Ms. Henderson—I think she’s gone.”
Eve swore bitterly. “Well then, we’ll just have to find Del and Wendy and ask where she is, won’t we?”
* * *
They found the supervillain on the fourth floor of a multistory car park in the center of Watford. She was lying in wait for them. Actually lying, on the oil-stained concrete floor where she’d passed out, which was a first in their experience.
As was so often the case, it wasn’t a boss fight or a thrown engine block that felled the villain: it was pure and simple fatigue. Mary had been run ragged for days. Then an altercation with her employer—a frank and sincere exchange of views—had left her with a broken rib and contusions. She’d left behind a pile of broken and bleeding bodies that nobody on the right side of the law would miss, and ridden off into the sunset on a stolen bike. But—point in her favor—she’d paused to snitch. Whether because of a guilty conscience or to indulge a vindictive urge towards her ex-employer was immaterial. What mattered was that she’d cracked and asked for a meeting. Which was all well and good, but here she was, at the designated location in a multistory car park above a decrepit shopping mall, and she was dead to the world.
“’Ello, Mary. Wakey-wakey. You can come peacefully or not: but either way you’re fucking nicked.”
They’d expected a fight, of course. Mary didn’t have the children with her—that was too much to hope for. So she was obviously going to try and bargain, but kidnapping children was a crime for which the Bloody Code prescribed Peine forte et dure unless the judge was feeling merciful enough to simply hang you. And Mary had done other things, too, things involving a succession of stolen vehicles and armed robberies committed with very big guns. They were in no mood to go easy on her: this time they weren’t under the influence of her brain-fogging amulet—but wasn’t it an interesting question where she’d gotten that from, or rather who had given it to her, and why?
“Guns won’t ’elp you now, and the car park’s cordoned off. You’re not going anywhere.”
Mr. and Mrs. Banks wanted answers from their errant nanny. Their first question they had already addressed to the National Crime Intelligence Service. It had disgorged the interest fact that her name was Mary all right, but Mary MacCandless, not Mary Drop. And Mary MacCandless had form.
“Where are our children, Mary?”
Mary moaned quietly and stirred, too slowly for her captors, so Mrs. Banks shocked her. It was a love tap by the Blue Queen’s standards: a flick of a finger and a spark that made Mary jerk and her teeth click together.
“Where are our children, Mary?” Captain Colossal repeated. “Don’t make me ask you a third time.”
“Don’t—” Mary groaned, but didn’t try to sit up. “Supermarket. Chick’n … Chickentown.”
“Are you sure about that? Because we’re going to let you take us to them and if you’ve touched a hair on their heads, it’ll be the high bar for you.” The Blue Queen’s voice was low but menacing. “The highest bar on Tyburn, and then who’s going to look after your father? Because we know who you are, Mary MacCandless.”
Captain Colossal hefted her messenger bag. “Fun gadget, this,” he commented. “It infected you, didn’t it?” The villain twitched, then froze as she remembered who she was dealing with. Her metal-sheathed fingers clattered off the concrete briefly as the Captain continued: “I reckon it was the dementia that got him, isn’t that right? It got him just as it gave him the power to make toys. Only, Mary, you should have asked why the toys. Power only ever comes at a price, and the parasites don’t much care about ’oo your family is, do they? So now your dad’s power ’as gotten its teeth into you, and it doesn’t feel so good, does it? What was her name, the Bionic Woman? How does it feel to be her? Can you feel it eating you from the inside out?”
Mary moaned again.
“Take us to our children,” ordered the Captain—his wife remained silent, biting back a fury so vast that if she spoke she’d bubble the paint on every car on this level—“and if they’re all right, then we might offer you a deal.”
“We won’t let them hang you,” Mrs. Banks added. “What would be the point? If they hang you, you might take hours to die. Half your skeleton’s turned to carbon fiber, and the other half’s broken.”
“It was the Thief-taker General,” she husked.
“Int’resting,” said Captain Colossal.
“Th-Thief-taker General told me he, he wanted you out of the way. Em, embarrassed. Thief-taking contracts up for Home Office auction next month. Ex S’per—Superintendent—Barrett, he wants ’em. He said—”
“Bullshit,” Captain Colossal said, leaning over her. The Blue Queen moved to zap her again, but he waved her back.
“Yeah … he tried, tried to off me. Ren-reneged. He’s got my dad. Said he had ’im a bed in a secure clinic.”
“So you know what it’s like?” Trudy Banks finally spoke, quiet fury making her voice quiver unsteadily.
“What’d you do for, how far would you go, for your fam’ly?” asked Mary. The Blue Queen answered her with a shock. But she’d given her pause, so Trudy Banks refrained from electrocuting the villain.
“Do you know why Mr. Barrett wanted our children, Mary?”
“I, I can’t—I don’t know, but I’m guessing—don’t hurt me!—he’s mixed up with that supermarket in Chickentown.”
“You abandoned our children,” Mr. Banks threatened.
“I ’ad no choice! There were these things…” Mary shuddered.
“Things.” The Blue Queen’s smile was the most terrifying thing Mary had ever seen (charging Tyrannosaurs included). “Get up.” She grabbed Mary’s arm and heaved. Cracked ribs grated and Mary swallowed a scream of pain.
“So, this supermarket,” said Captain Colossal. “It’s in Chickentown?” Mary nodded. “What’s it called? What road is it on?”
“FlavrsMart, on the high street—only branch—my ribs—”
The Blue Queen paid her no notice as she cuffed Mary’s wrists behind her back, then strapped her into a five-point suspension harness and roped it to her equipment belt. “Got that?” she asked her husband off handedly.
“Check, target is FlavrsMart high street Chickentown, informant implicated the Wilde Corporation, on my way.” The concrete underfoot vibrated like a hollow drum as Captain Colossal pulled his boots up. “Bag her, tag her, and call in ground support: I’m on my way.” The two superheroes rose from the roof of the car park and turned to fly east, their captive dangling below them as a convoy of flashing red and blue light bars followed at ground level.
* * *
Eve and her crew cleared the offices and the customer areas at the back of the first floor, then proceeded forward, room by room. There was a pileup of deflated, stinking body stockings in front of the door to the branch manager’s office. Eve waved her guards back before reaching out and knocking on the door with a telekinetically levitated Biro. “Anyone alive in there?” she called.
“Ms. Starkey? Is that you?” The voice was familiar: Imp took a shuddering breath from sheer relief, then regretted it immediately.
“Yes, Wendy, it’s me. You can come out now, we’ve dealt with the muppets.”
The door opened and three faces peered out suspiciously. “Who’s this?” asked Eve.
“This is Amy Sullivan, formerly of FlavrsMart HR,” said Wendy. “Amy, this is Eve Starkey.”
Eve smiled like a skull. “I own FlavrsMart now,” she said; “What do you mean by formerly?”
“HiveCo Security pays a headhunter bonus,” Del sneered.
“I uh, I quit?” Amy squeaked.
Eve bit her tongue. “What can you tell me about what’s been going on here?” she asked. “We’re looking for some kidnapped children but all we found were—” She gestured wordlessly at the carnage.
“Children?” Amy boggled. “I don’t know about any children! But nothing would surprise me about Jennifer.”
“Jennifer?” Eve raised an eyebrow.
“The priestess,” Wendy volunteered.
“Where is she?”
“She hasn’t been here for a while.” Amy looked sick. “She went off-site to give a presentation to the board this morning, then closed the store and disappeared—” she swallowed—“oh.”
“Right.” Eve nodded to herself, then turned to Gunderson: “We’re going to have to do this the hard way, then. Sweep the shop floor.”
Back on the ground floor they found and neutralized another eight shambling body stockings stuffed with giblets, mince, and unspeakable offal, wearing masks chanting nonsensical computerized warnings. Then they reached an aisle of chest freezers at the back of the store.
“What’s this?” Eve prompted.
“Look.”
They reached the end of the chest freezers. Game Boy faced the gleaming stainless steel delicatessen counter and its display of special meat products. Sausages and joints of lamb and Sunday roasts loitered under the polished glass covering the refrigerated countertop.
“Oh God,” Game Boy moaned.
“Don’t be silly, it’s just”—Eve’s eyes widened—“oh fuck.” Behind her, one of the guards turned away, clearly trying not to throw up.
The chilled slab fronting the deli counter had been cleared. Now it displayed a most unusual creation. Three middle-aged men and a woman lay atop the chilled counters, posed with eyes closed and arms folded. They were naked and lay as if asleep, but there was something subtly wrong with them. Gradually the details slithered into focus in Imp’s mind, displacing his initial recognition of naked old farts dozing on the counter with the apprehension of something much uglier. He tried to make sense of the individual pieces of the puzzle his eyes presented him with, but it was too much: the roseate, erect, unrealistically regular nipples, flaccid crotch-sausages, fingers capped with onionskin nails, hair that was actually an elegant composition of spaghetti al dente, the eyes that were—
“They’re made out of meat,” Game Boy wailed and turned away.
“They’re what?” Doc took a step closer, then recoiled. “Oh yuck.”
“They’ve been piloting meat printers at this branch,” Eve remarked distantly. “I should have asked why. I have questions.”
The Gammon who had been gulping for air finally bent double and began to heave.
Eve was the first to get a grip. “Bill, Vicky—Doc, you, too—go and clear the room behind that door.” She gestured at a heavy plastic flap with a transparent window, fogged by a decade of scouring products. “If you find anyone still alive, try and get them to—”
“Yeah, and what’s that about?” Game Boy chirped. “Why would she do that?”
“They’re metahumans. Probably powerful ones, going by their parents. You can capture mana from a human sacrifice, and you get a lot more mana if your victim is a sorcerously endowed adept—a transhuman, in other words. Rupert was experimenting with mass human sacrifice—I’m pretty sure that’s why he was trying to buy FlavrsMart—but quality has a quantity all of its own. There are probably some other angles as well but I can’t be bothered untangling them all while we’re running down the clock.”
The SUV came to a dead stop in one corner of the car park and the engine stilled. A steel gate at one side opened onto a goods area. Steel roller shutters blocked access to the loading docks. A second SUV rolled up behind them. The doors opened and four heavies in identical suits and dark glasses climbed out. One of them opened the trunk and began to distribute the tools of the trade: anti-stab vests, pistols, wards strung on necklaces.
“Issue banishment rounds, two mags each,” Eve told the armorer. To the other heavies she added, “Don’t waste them, each round costs fifty quid. They should work first time, no need to double-tap. You, you, and you, these are Jeremy, Doc, and Game Boy: Jeremy’s an influencer, Doc is a projective empath specializing in negative emotions, and Game Boy can dodge bullets. Guard them, they’re your ticket out of here if things break bad. Imp, Doc? If you see the priestess, her name’s Jennifer Henderson, she’s an HR manager, and she’s at least a level two practitioner, maybe three—hit her with everything you’ve got and don’t stop until she’s down. Everyone: you’re going to see some really unpleasant things in here. Don’t let it get to you. Remember most of the opposition aren’t human any more, and the company health plan will cover your therapy.”
“Isn’t this a job for the government?” Game Boy asked before Doc could put a hand over his mouth.
Eve’s face was stony. “If the government start lifting carpet corners and peering underneath before I’ve cleaned house there’s no telling what they’ll find, and none of us want that. Vicky, George, if you would be so good as to make a forced entry, please? Don’t worry about damage, I closed on a controlling stake in FlavrsMart this morning.” George nodded, then leaned into the back and hauled out a steel battering ram.
The concrete steps up to the loading dock were unguarded but Eve went first, chanting a monotone in a language with far too many gutturals and clicks for a human larynx. A faint glow surrounded her fingertips as she waved them in front of her face. “Clear,” she said tersely, then stepped aside as Vicky and Bill took up positions beside a door to one side of the shutters while George swung the ram.
The lock shattered and an alarm began to bleep. The door crashed open to reveal a twilit concrete tunnel instead of a loading bay—obviously some kind of emergency exit. “Hey, we get to LARP Resident Evil! I got this!” Game Boy stepped up before Imp could stop him, then skipped forward and bolted out of sight around a corner. “Clear!” he trilled.
“Shit.” His assigned bodyguard dashed after him, pistol drawn. Imp made to move forward but his own muscle held up a beefy arm. “Over my dead body,” the goon grunted, “or Miss Starkey’ll have my head.”
“Ladies first—” Imp said as Eve pushed past the guard and entered the corridor. Her face was eerily underlit: after a moment Imp realized that her pearl choker was glowing, ripples of amethyst and turquoise light chasing around it. With the part of his mind’s eye that was still magically inclined he beheld the power and majesty of a sorcerer of House Starkey: Eve had dropped her pretense of normality and stepped out of the shadows. “Go on! Move!” He pushed, and the guard’s mind gave way like damp cardboard under the wheels of a bus, for Imp was not without power of his own. They followed Eve, and Doc and his bodyguard took up the rear.
“Up here!” Game Boy’s voice echoed down a narrow stairwell with white-painted cinder block walls. They pounded up the steps after him and came to a maze of cramped offices.
“Oh crap!” Game Boy’s bodyguard bellowed. “Get on the ground! You! Get on the—”
A gunshot reverberated through the offices, followed by a shrill scream of fear and loathing.
Imp followed his sister into a break room where Game Boy huddled in a corner behind an overturned sofa, while his guard faced off against a human-shaped sausage-skin held together with duct tape and nylon straps. Its face was obscured by some sort of plastic mask displaying an approximation of a human face, the color balance all wrong and the features uncoordinated. “Intruder. Intruder. Intruder,” it intoned as it tried to get around the sofa. There was a bullet hole in the figure’s back, and it was leaking something pink and disgustingly bloodless that resembled raw mincemeat. Game Boy’s guard raised his gun and fired again, this time hitting it right in the middle of the forehead. It staggered, then leaned forward and tried to grab the pistol.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Eve said exasperatedly, then pointed a finger at it: “Die, already!”
The muppet collapsed, not falling but sagging and distorting as the contents of the meatsack lost cohesion and fell into its legs and abdomen, head deflating like a leaky balloon.
“Did you not swap out your magazine for banishment rounds?” she scolded, hands on hips.
The guard looked sheepish. “But you said they was expen—”
“There is expensive and then there is needlessly paying for your funeral,” Eve snapped. An immediate ratchet and clatter of magazines being ejected and replaced signalled that the message had gotten across.
“What is it?” Imp leaned over the body-shaped meatsack. Opening his inner eye, he blinked painfully and looked. “Is that—”
“Mechanically reclaimed beef and pork scraps.” Eve’s tone was one of prim disapproval. “I’d estimate maybe ten percent human meat by weight. Minimum viable human sacrifice to animate a, a mincemeat golem, I think you could reasonably call it.” She glanced around her audience. “There will be more of these things. They’re akin to zombies, only not exactly. A banishment round should take them down, but do not, repeat not, let them grab hold of you or make direct skin contact with the effluvium. Your wards might save you but you shouldn’t rely on them.”
“What now, Miss?” asked Game Boy’s guard, suitably chastened but tooled up with ammunition that might actually work against a paranormal adversary.
“We search this shop for Ms. Henderson. Who, incidentally, made these things,” she pointed at the fallen muppet, “using my company resources, which I take a very dim view of—it’s unsanitary—on company time. You may find my brother’s friend Rebecca in company with a HiveCo Security investigator called Wendy—they’re friendly, trust Imp, Doc, and Game Boy for identification. If you find four rather frightened children who may or may not be dressed as Terrortots, call me. They’re probably locked up somewhere and they’re dangerous metahumans so do not scare them: just call me. Oh, and if you find any more meat golems, drop them.”
“I think—” Game Boy zoned out for a few seconds, then shook his head—“I can’t find any kids? There are some more golems on the shop floor, there are some golems and human beings in the loading bay, but I can’t get a route to Ms. Henderson—I think she’s gone.”
Eve swore bitterly. “Well then, we’ll just have to find Del and Wendy and ask where she is, won’t we?”
* * *
They found the supervillain on the fourth floor of a multistory car park in the center of Watford. She was lying in wait for them. Actually lying, on the oil-stained concrete floor where she’d passed out, which was a first in their experience.
As was so often the case, it wasn’t a boss fight or a thrown engine block that felled the villain: it was pure and simple fatigue. Mary had been run ragged for days. Then an altercation with her employer—a frank and sincere exchange of views—had left her with a broken rib and contusions. She’d left behind a pile of broken and bleeding bodies that nobody on the right side of the law would miss, and ridden off into the sunset on a stolen bike. But—point in her favor—she’d paused to snitch. Whether because of a guilty conscience or to indulge a vindictive urge towards her ex-employer was immaterial. What mattered was that she’d cracked and asked for a meeting. Which was all well and good, but here she was, at the designated location in a multistory car park above a decrepit shopping mall, and she was dead to the world.
“’Ello, Mary. Wakey-wakey. You can come peacefully or not: but either way you’re fucking nicked.”
They’d expected a fight, of course. Mary didn’t have the children with her—that was too much to hope for. So she was obviously going to try and bargain, but kidnapping children was a crime for which the Bloody Code prescribed Peine forte et dure unless the judge was feeling merciful enough to simply hang you. And Mary had done other things, too, things involving a succession of stolen vehicles and armed robberies committed with very big guns. They were in no mood to go easy on her: this time they weren’t under the influence of her brain-fogging amulet—but wasn’t it an interesting question where she’d gotten that from, or rather who had given it to her, and why?
“Guns won’t ’elp you now, and the car park’s cordoned off. You’re not going anywhere.”
Mr. and Mrs. Banks wanted answers from their errant nanny. Their first question they had already addressed to the National Crime Intelligence Service. It had disgorged the interest fact that her name was Mary all right, but Mary MacCandless, not Mary Drop. And Mary MacCandless had form.
“Where are our children, Mary?”
Mary moaned quietly and stirred, too slowly for her captors, so Mrs. Banks shocked her. It was a love tap by the Blue Queen’s standards: a flick of a finger and a spark that made Mary jerk and her teeth click together.
“Where are our children, Mary?” Captain Colossal repeated. “Don’t make me ask you a third time.”
“Don’t—” Mary groaned, but didn’t try to sit up. “Supermarket. Chick’n … Chickentown.”
“Are you sure about that? Because we’re going to let you take us to them and if you’ve touched a hair on their heads, it’ll be the high bar for you.” The Blue Queen’s voice was low but menacing. “The highest bar on Tyburn, and then who’s going to look after your father? Because we know who you are, Mary MacCandless.”
Captain Colossal hefted her messenger bag. “Fun gadget, this,” he commented. “It infected you, didn’t it?” The villain twitched, then froze as she remembered who she was dealing with. Her metal-sheathed fingers clattered off the concrete briefly as the Captain continued: “I reckon it was the dementia that got him, isn’t that right? It got him just as it gave him the power to make toys. Only, Mary, you should have asked why the toys. Power only ever comes at a price, and the parasites don’t much care about ’oo your family is, do they? So now your dad’s power ’as gotten its teeth into you, and it doesn’t feel so good, does it? What was her name, the Bionic Woman? How does it feel to be her? Can you feel it eating you from the inside out?”
Mary moaned again.
“Take us to our children,” ordered the Captain—his wife remained silent, biting back a fury so vast that if she spoke she’d bubble the paint on every car on this level—“and if they’re all right, then we might offer you a deal.”
“We won’t let them hang you,” Mrs. Banks added. “What would be the point? If they hang you, you might take hours to die. Half your skeleton’s turned to carbon fiber, and the other half’s broken.”
“It was the Thief-taker General,” she husked.
“Int’resting,” said Captain Colossal.
“Th-Thief-taker General told me he, he wanted you out of the way. Em, embarrassed. Thief-taking contracts up for Home Office auction next month. Ex S’per—Superintendent—Barrett, he wants ’em. He said—”
“Bullshit,” Captain Colossal said, leaning over her. The Blue Queen moved to zap her again, but he waved her back.
“Yeah … he tried, tried to off me. Ren-reneged. He’s got my dad. Said he had ’im a bed in a secure clinic.”
“So you know what it’s like?” Trudy Banks finally spoke, quiet fury making her voice quiver unsteadily.
“What’d you do for, how far would you go, for your fam’ly?” asked Mary. The Blue Queen answered her with a shock. But she’d given her pause, so Trudy Banks refrained from electrocuting the villain.
“Do you know why Mr. Barrett wanted our children, Mary?”
“I, I can’t—I don’t know, but I’m guessing—don’t hurt me!—he’s mixed up with that supermarket in Chickentown.”
“You abandoned our children,” Mr. Banks threatened.
“I ’ad no choice! There were these things…” Mary shuddered.
“Things.” The Blue Queen’s smile was the most terrifying thing Mary had ever seen (charging Tyrannosaurs included). “Get up.” She grabbed Mary’s arm and heaved. Cracked ribs grated and Mary swallowed a scream of pain.
“So, this supermarket,” said Captain Colossal. “It’s in Chickentown?” Mary nodded. “What’s it called? What road is it on?”
“FlavrsMart, on the high street—only branch—my ribs—”
The Blue Queen paid her no notice as she cuffed Mary’s wrists behind her back, then strapped her into a five-point suspension harness and roped it to her equipment belt. “Got that?” she asked her husband off handedly.
“Check, target is FlavrsMart high street Chickentown, informant implicated the Wilde Corporation, on my way.” The concrete underfoot vibrated like a hollow drum as Captain Colossal pulled his boots up. “Bag her, tag her, and call in ground support: I’m on my way.” The two superheroes rose from the roof of the car park and turned to fly east, their captive dangling below them as a convoy of flashing red and blue light bars followed at ground level.
* * *
Eve and her crew cleared the offices and the customer areas at the back of the first floor, then proceeded forward, room by room. There was a pileup of deflated, stinking body stockings in front of the door to the branch manager’s office. Eve waved her guards back before reaching out and knocking on the door with a telekinetically levitated Biro. “Anyone alive in there?” she called.
“Ms. Starkey? Is that you?” The voice was familiar: Imp took a shuddering breath from sheer relief, then regretted it immediately.
“Yes, Wendy, it’s me. You can come out now, we’ve dealt with the muppets.”
The door opened and three faces peered out suspiciously. “Who’s this?” asked Eve.
“This is Amy Sullivan, formerly of FlavrsMart HR,” said Wendy. “Amy, this is Eve Starkey.”
Eve smiled like a skull. “I own FlavrsMart now,” she said; “What do you mean by formerly?”
“HiveCo Security pays a headhunter bonus,” Del sneered.
“I uh, I quit?” Amy squeaked.
Eve bit her tongue. “What can you tell me about what’s been going on here?” she asked. “We’re looking for some kidnapped children but all we found were—” She gestured wordlessly at the carnage.
“Children?” Amy boggled. “I don’t know about any children! But nothing would surprise me about Jennifer.”
“Jennifer?” Eve raised an eyebrow.
“The priestess,” Wendy volunteered.
“Where is she?”
“She hasn’t been here for a while.” Amy looked sick. “She went off-site to give a presentation to the board this morning, then closed the store and disappeared—” she swallowed—“oh.”
“Right.” Eve nodded to herself, then turned to Gunderson: “We’re going to have to do this the hard way, then. Sweep the shop floor.”
Back on the ground floor they found and neutralized another eight shambling body stockings stuffed with giblets, mince, and unspeakable offal, wearing masks chanting nonsensical computerized warnings. Then they reached an aisle of chest freezers at the back of the store.
“What’s this?” Eve prompted.
“Look.”
They reached the end of the chest freezers. Game Boy faced the gleaming stainless steel delicatessen counter and its display of special meat products. Sausages and joints of lamb and Sunday roasts loitered under the polished glass covering the refrigerated countertop.
“Oh God,” Game Boy moaned.
“Don’t be silly, it’s just”—Eve’s eyes widened—“oh fuck.” Behind her, one of the guards turned away, clearly trying not to throw up.
The chilled slab fronting the deli counter had been cleared. Now it displayed a most unusual creation. Three middle-aged men and a woman lay atop the chilled counters, posed with eyes closed and arms folded. They were naked and lay as if asleep, but there was something subtly wrong with them. Gradually the details slithered into focus in Imp’s mind, displacing his initial recognition of naked old farts dozing on the counter with the apprehension of something much uglier. He tried to make sense of the individual pieces of the puzzle his eyes presented him with, but it was too much: the roseate, erect, unrealistically regular nipples, flaccid crotch-sausages, fingers capped with onionskin nails, hair that was actually an elegant composition of spaghetti al dente, the eyes that were—
“They’re made out of meat,” Game Boy wailed and turned away.
“They’re what?” Doc took a step closer, then recoiled. “Oh yuck.”
“They’ve been piloting meat printers at this branch,” Eve remarked distantly. “I should have asked why. I have questions.”
The Gammon who had been gulping for air finally bent double and began to heave.
Eve was the first to get a grip. “Bill, Vicky—Doc, you, too—go and clear the room behind that door.” She gestured at a heavy plastic flap with a transparent window, fogged by a decade of scouring products. “If you find anyone still alive, try and get them to—”
