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  Sirens, in the distance, approaching fast. This part of London was about to get locked down. John stood, starting for the exit.

  “Stay here,” he said. “They’ll find you. Sorry about the hip.”

  “Wait, you’re just going to leave me here? I don’t even know your name!”

  “My name’s John. And I’m not staying. You hear that?” He nodded his head at the door, and the sirens. “I want no part of that. You’ll be safe here. They’re long gone by now.”

  John saw her open her mouth to protest as he turned back toward the door. He strode out into the bright sunlight.

  Didn’t look back.

  2

  “Wake up, Pussy!”

  John was asleep, and moving at the same time. It made no sense. His eyes were open, he was sure, but he saw nothing; heard little above the thunderous ringing in his head. But he was definitely moving; he could feel the uneven ground sliding along beneath his heels, scraping along and taking in every bump.

  He was being dragged. He could feel it now, the strong fingers under his armpits. Someone was hauling him along, moving fast.

  A faint light sprang up in the centre of his vision, indistinct at first but gradually widening, coming into focus.

  He seemed to be being dragged through a forest. It was night. There was screaming.

  The world rushed back in on a wave of terror.

  The Captain was hauling him along, crashing through the forest, making noise. John’s heart leapt into his throat. He saw it then, ahead of him but receding, like an object in a rear view mirror: Rabbit crashing to the ground under the weight of three bodies, scrabbling at him like enraged rats, tearing at his clothes, sinking teeth into his abdomen, ripping him apart. Rabbit’s screams, rising to a nerve-shattering crescendo filled the woods before ending suddenly with a sharp snap.

  His neck, John thought, horrified.

  Hound had served in Afghanistan with Rabbit. They were brothers delivered from the womb of war. They came as a set, one never far from the other.

  That was the bond that cost Hound his life. That unbreakable connection that meant the sight of Rabbit being attacked led inexorably to Hound abandoning reason and rushing to his fallen brother’s aid.

  Unthinking, he ran blindly to his death, his frantic attempts to pull the monsters off Rabbit only serving to offer himself up to them.

  John saw the teeth clamp onto Hound’s face, saw them pulled back, taking half his face with them, revealing sickening tendon and torn flesh. He heard Hound’s scream; more horrifying even than Rabbit’s. Hound, the intense, scary guy who apparently feared nothing died screaming pathetically for his mother.

  John found his feet then, pushed the pain and nausea of the concussion to one side. Driven by terror, he brushed the Captain’s hands away, stumbled to his feet, turned away from the horror, and ran, following the chaotic course plotted by Flea, Butterfly and Mouse.

  John had run from certain death once before, tearing away from the rattle of AK-47 fire, sure that at any moment the whistling of the bullets cascading through the alley that the commander of his platoon must have known they shouldn’t have entered would provide punctuation to John’s short life.

  That had been terrifying, this was something else entirely. Guns, he could comprehend. He knew he’d face them; they were in the contract he signed when he joined the army. But the insanity unfolding behind him lent him a speed borne of hysteria.

  If the creatures caught him, his death would not be sudden. It would be many long seconds of teeth and clawing fingers. An eternity of torment.

  Ahead of John, maybe fifty yards or so, another explosion lit the dark forest; another landmine. Flea was not as light-footed as his name suggested.

  Death in front, death behind, and nothing to do but run and pray to a god that John had long since turned his back on.

  He charged through the forest, keeping to the path set out by Mouse and Butterfly, expecting at any moment to see one or both of them disappear in a cloud of fire and shrapnel.

  He heard them crashing through the forest behind him, heard the unhinged screaming, did not even realise that the screams were being ripped from his own aching lungs.

  *

  “Dishonourable discharge.”

  The gravelly, sombre delivery carried an accusatory tone that made his hackles rise instantly.

  John kept his eyes levelled at the older man in clear challenge. What the hell did this pensioner in a suit, all manicured hands and transparent smile, know about being discharged from the military, honourably or otherwise?

  The suited man cleared his throat, suddenly looking uncomfortable. John stifled a smirk. This was the kind of guy who had made a career of watching subordinates quake when he walked past; a man who excelled at breeding the fear that he was the one with the power to take away their employment. His weapons were more insidious than any John had used: a chequebook; a balance sheet; a fucking PowerPoint presentation.

  Already this strange meeting in a nondescript office in Islington felt like a mistake.

  “Can you tell me about that?”

  John shrugged. “What’s to tell? I followed orders.”

  The old man frowned and looked at his papers. In his world answers came in black and white; in paperwork. Something was profitable or it wasn’t.

  “You were ordered to kill unarmed men.” He sounded dubious.

  When John spoke next, his voice cut through the silence like a blade.

  “That is correct. And women and children too. They didn’t bring that up at the hearing. They never do. I’ve spent the best part of a decade killing anything and everything: armed, unarmed. Some of them close enough to get their blood on me; others who were little more than stick figures in the distance. What do you think war is? What you see on the television? Smart bombs and high priority targets? Ha!”

  John snorted derisively. The old man seemed taken aback by the sudden vitriol.

  “But these men had surrendered; they were under your team’s control. That is murder, not war.”

  “Not my team,” John spat. “If I were handing the orders out I wouldn’t have been there in the fucking first place. I did as I was told, because that was my function. Failure to do so meant discharge. Of course, sooner or later, you’re going to wind up under the command of someone who can’t control his urges. Someone who puts you in a position where you kill or be killed and the idea of being dishonourably discharged suddenly seems more like a win than a loss.”

  “What position?”

  “I’m done talking about this. I don’t need to remind you, do I, that you contacted me? And you were already sitting on that file when you told your secretary to pick up the phone, right? This country is filling up with unemployed ex-army. If that’s what you need, why don’t you go find one of them?”

  John stood, turned toward the door, stopped when he heard the old man’s chuckle.

  “Heh, she was right about you. Sometimes her head gets so filled with the parties and the frocks and all that frivolous bullshit that I forget how sharp she can be.”

  John turned back to face him, brow wrinkled.

  “How sharp who can be?”

  *

  “There!” Mouse shouted breathlessly. “That’s got to be the place!”

  John swung his neck, following the direction the Captain’s hand pointed out. He saw nothing at first, until the leaves obscuring it parted: A symmetrical shape among the chaos of the trees, something large and dark and solid. A building.

  The three men burst into the tiny clearing, slowing only momentarily. The ‘building’ turned out to be little more than a large shed; old and flimsy, but it had a door. They rushed inside, slamming it behind them, plunging themselves into darkness. The space filled with gasps for air, sounding impossibly loud.

  “Shhh!” Mouse said. “Listen.”

  John tried to regulate his breathing, attempting to mollify his burning lungs with quick, shallow breaths.

  For long
moments they heard nothing. John’s ears filled with the insistent drum-pound of his heartbeat, muffling all other sound.

  “You hear them?” He panted breathlessly.

  Mouse lifted a hand to silence him, shaking his head a little.

  John held his breath, ignoring the hammering ache in his lungs, and listened. Silence fell in the darkness. And then they heard it, the rustling, cracking, snapping approach of their hideous pursuers. They sounded close, but still far enough away that John allowed himself to believe that they might, just might have a chance.

  “Mouse, you think-“

  “Cut the ‘Mouse’ shit, John,” The captain sighed, his voice quaking. “Panda – Greg – was right about the whole thing. Those fuckers went ahead and conducted some vast experiment on the world, and they had no damn idea what the results would be. We’re out here – out there,” – he jabbed his finger at the closed door – “and those idiots are worried that someone is going to overhear our names?”

  His voice rose a little, harsh and bitter, and dissolved into a hard-edged chuckle.

  “They don’t have the first clue. This is what the world is now.” He shook his head. “Call me Jeff. If we live long enough for someone to bitch about protocol, I’ll happily take the heat.”

  He laughed again, the sound low yet harsh and…something else. Something that made distant alarms of recognition sound faintly in John’s head.

  John squinted into the darkness, catching just enough light to get a vague impression of Jeff’s expression. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked for all the world like the Captain was grinning widely.

  Suddenly John felt unnerved just being trapped in this shed with these two men. He hadn’t served with them; barely knew them other than a few hectic days spent at the base; had hardly conversed much beyond pleasantries.

  The ones he had gotten to know a little better, Hound and Panda and Flea - men he had spent some time with before this ‘mission’ began - were all gone.

  What John was left with, it suddenly occurred to him, was two armed, well trained, high-functioning psychopaths in various stages of what appeared to be mental collapse, stuck with him in a shed in the middle of fucking nowhere, surrounded by demented cannibals.

  It sounded like the start of a bad joke. You hear the one about the three psychos in a shed?

  He felt a smirk creeping at the corners of his mouth and forced himself to focus. The Captain was already halfway down the path to hysteria, by the looks of it. He was a leader, but John would be damned if he was following him there.

  It looked like Jeff had decided finally that orders meant nothing and the realisation had hit him like a speeding Humvee. John had always known orders were bullshit. Maybe that gave him half a chance of not losing his shit entirely.

  There was no noise outside, the blundering of the creatures outside having receded. They had moved away. John found himself wondering if they had intelligence: were they now wandering the woods, searching sightlessly for their lost targets, or had something else now caught their attention? Did they remember?

  There was a metallic click. Another. A small flame erupted in the darkness. Ash’s lighter cast a feeble glow in the dark shed, but it was enough. They all saw it.

  To the rear of the building, next to a small pile of debris, was a hatch built into the floor.

  “Got you, you bastard,” Jeff muttered.

  *

  “My daughter,” the old man said, as though it should have been obvious all along.

  Her. Of course it had something to do with her. John should have known you don’t enter the orbit of someone like that and just walk away. Any interaction, no matter how small, would cause ripples. And John’s particular interaction had been anything but small.

  This, then, was Daddy. The man the guys with knives had been ultimately trying to get to. John still didn’t have a clue who the man was, nor who she was, but the old man reeked of even older money. He couldn’t help but be impressed that they had tracked him down so efficiently, with so little information. A bike messenger called John. And they found him in less than a week. Whoever this guy was, he had reach.

  “She okay?” John asked abruptly. The old man blinked in surprise.

  “She’s fine. Bruised hipbone or some such thing. More damage to her ego I should think, but I’ve felt for a while that could stand a little dent or two. She never was quite careful enough.”

  The old man’s eyes were a little unfocused, staring over John’s shoulder, as though an old memory had suddenly crept up behind him. With a small shake of thick white hair, the old guy’s attention returned to the room.

  “We owe you a debt, Mr Francis. Ordinarily that would be a matter of writing you a cheque, but my daughter insisted that you possessed skills that might prove useful in the long run. She wanted to thank you in a manner with a little more…longevity.”

  “Such as?”

  “I would like to offer you a job, Mr Francis. A job in…security, you might say. Something that should suit your particular skillset.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not interested in doing anything illegal.”

  The old man guffawed.

  “Morals, John? Really? Quaint.”

  “Not morals. Logic. I know enough about law enforcement. I know that sooner or later they catch up with people. And the people they catch up with are the likes of me, never the likes of you.”

  The old man grinned widely, lending his craggy features a hint of youthfulness, as though John had said something delightfully amusing.

  “Quite so, my boy!” He said. “But don’t worry, John. I can guarantee you that you will not be breaking any of this country’s laws. You will simply be providing security to some very important people while they go about their work. All I need of you is dedication and silence. What my company is undertaking is quite…sensitive. Any details leaked ahead of time could jeopardise the whole operation. I’m sure that’s nothing a man like you isn’t used to?”

  John frowned, lost in thought.

  “Your starting salary would be £200,000 per year.”

  The figure almost knocked John backwards. Any ordinary security job might net him twenty grand; thirty at a push.

  “What is it your company does, exactly?” John asked, eyes narrowing.

  “Ah,” the old man replied, eyes twinkling. “I suppose you could say we dabble in the futures market.”

  3

  The door to the shed had a lock, but without a key, the three men had to opt for pushing some of the debris scattered on the floor up against it, as quietly as possible, hoping the temporary barricade would deter any blind visitors from stumbling through the door.

  When the door was as secure as they could make it, they turned to the hatch. It had a keypad. Jeff was busily frowning at it, no doubt wondering how they might pry it open, or whether they might be able to find any C4 among the equipment they had left scattered through the forest during the pursuit, when John reached down and pulled on the handle. The hatch was heavy, but swung up easily.

  Not locked. John felt a slight sinking sensation. No one bothers to build themselves a castle and then forgets to pull up the drawbridge when the danger they were expecting draws near.

  He peered down: a ladder descending into a narrow shaft, and below, the faint glow of an electric light. It should have engendered a feeling of safety, he supposed, dropping into the bowels of the earth, a bridge to cross from the horrors on the surface. Smelling the stale air though, and hearing nothing but oppressive silence, John couldn’t help wondering if they were stepping from one Hell into another.

  They must feel it too he thought, realising that both of his colleagues were also paused at the precipice, staring down intently. There’s death waiting for us down there.

  It was the Captain who finally broke the spell, swinging a leg down onto the first rung of the ladder.

  Even now, John realised, the man’s compulsion to lead, to demonstrate some sort of functioning chain of com
mand was driving him on, perhaps even keeping him sane.

  Jeff descended, his face disappearing from view. John shot a glance at Ash, got little back beyond wide, fearful eyes and he shrugged. When Jeff was clear, John threw his leg over the side, and began the descent.

  When he reached the bottom, John found himself standing in a short concrete corridor that led to a surprisingly spacious living area. The central area was dominated by a low comfortable-looking couch, and decorated sparsely but well enough to give the impression of standing in a regular living room, as opposed to some nuclear-style bunker. To the right John saw a small kitchen area, to the left a bathroom and a doorway, currently filled by the solid frame of the Captain.

  Jeff was staring silently into the room beyond the doorway, unmoving.

  “Jeff?” said John, starting toward him. Behind, Ash completed his descent and stepped into the living room, casting his eyes about; a bemused expression across his features.

  John reached the Captain’s side and peered into the room. It was just a fairly standard bedroom, a small double bed, a table with a lamp providing soft illumination. Nothing out of the ordinary beyond the fact there were no windows.

  And the blood.

  It took John a moment to see it in the dim light. The stain had dried to a dark brown on the sheets, partially obscured by blankets. John slipped past the Captain and into the room, pulling the blanket back.

  “Someone lost a lot of blood here,” he said, almost absent-mindedly. “Looks like there are several shades of red. I guess someone was here bleeding for several days at least.”

  He straightened, casting a puzzled glance about. There was no blood anywhere else. The scene made little sense to him.

  Behind them, Ash whistled.

  “Any sign of a body?”

  “Nope,” John replied.

  “Well, it might be further down. Found another ladder.”

  John turned to face Ash, and the sinking sensation returned.