City of Shadows

Chapter 24

7.37 a.m., 12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, outside Branford

Liam, Bob and Becks approached the RV cautiously. It sat in the motel’s small forecourt on its own. Overhead the sky was noisy with the thwup-thwup of a police helicopter, hovering above the pale slab of the mall several hundred yards away.

Liam could also hear the sound of several approaching police cars and ambulances coming from further up Interstate 95, brake lights winking on down the congested road like a Mexican wave as drivers slowed to pull aside and let them through.

Ahead of them, the RV.

‘Maddy said we should meet at the diner,’ said Bob.

‘I want to check on SpongeBubba,’ said Liam. ‘You think it’s safe?’ he added. ‘Maybe there’s another of them inside.’

‘I detect no idents,’ said Becks.

‘Just a moment,’ said Bob. He closed his eyes.

‘Why? What’re you doing?’

A few seconds later the rear door of the RV swung open and a yellow cube appeared on the top step.

‘Communicating with the lab unit,’ replied Bob. He smiled down at Liam. ‘SpongeBubba says it’s all clear inside.’

They crossed the last fifty yards, Liam gesturing at SpongeBubba to get back inside. They didn’t need the lab robot attracting attention. Liam climbed up and slumped down on the rear seat, damp with perspiration.

‘Gee!’ said SpongeBubba with a fixed plastic grin. ‘Fun and games!’

Becks looked down at the small robot. ‘No. Not fun and games. Danger.’

Bob clambered inside. The RV rocked. ‘Your warning saved us, lab unit. We are grateful.’

‘You’re welcome. Where’s my skippa?’

Liam looked out through the scuffed perspex, hoping to catch sight of the others weaving through the cars in the mall’s car park towards the motel. Nothing yet.

‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘They were just behind us. I think.’ He looked at Bob and Becks. ‘Right?’

Bob shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Foster will have slowed them down,’ said Becks. ‘He moved very slowly.’

She was right. Liam decided he should have stayed behind, with Maddy, to help her with the old man. A dreadful thought occurred to him. That those killer meatbots had trapped and finished both of them off. Perhaps Rashim and Sal as well. He felt a growing surge of panic inside him. The idea of spending the rest of his life alone on the run with two support units and something that looked like a yellow bar of soap on stumpy legs terrified him.

Please… please… somebody else turn up.

Faith recognized the young woman instantly. The oval jawline, the glasses, the curly strawberry-blonde hair, all a perfect match. But even without the visual match the look of sudden recognition and sheer horror — as their eyes locked — gave the girl away. Faith reached round behind her and whipped out the handgun from her waistband.

‘Please move out of the way!’ she commanded the evacuating people all around her as she levelled the gun at her target.

‘ OH-MY-GOD-SHE’S-GOT-A-GUN! ’ someone screamed.

That worked better. The crowd, jostling to get down the frozen escalator, dropped to the floor as one, and Faith had a perfect line-of-sight on Maddy. The only person still on her feet.

Maddy pushed the large woman crouching in front, desperately trying to get past. But the woman was too big to make a space on the escalator. Maddy found herself clambering over her back.

‘Ow! Jesus help me! I’m being assaulted!’ screamed the woman.

‘I need to get past!’ Maddy replied. ‘I need to freakin’ well get — ’

A shot rang out. The glass of the escalator’s side exploded. The woman ducked down as shards scattered over her rounded shoulders and Maddy rolled over the top of her, on to someone else in front. Another shot thudded into the thick rubber handrest.

She found her feet and decided she was far enough down the escalator to jump over the side. She landed on the top of a display of plastic tropical bushes embedded in a bed of pebbles. Not the softest landing, but perhaps far better than the mall’s faux marble floor. She scrambled on to her feet yet again, people all around her shrieking in alarm as several more shots rang out across the entrance foyer.

‘Get out, get out!’ Maddy screamed at the bottleneck of people fighting with each other to exit through the revolving door, and the fire exits either side of it.

Faith strode towards the safety rail of the concourse above, overlooking the escalator. She saw her target below on the ground floor, grappling with people, tugging at them to make way for her. She took aim again and fired two shots, emptying the clip. Downstairs, more glass exploded, and the screaming all around her took on a new shrill, intense pitch.

Faith clambered over the rail and let herself drop down. She landed twenty feet below on the hard floor, like a cat landing on its feet, legs flexed to absorb the impact like the over-pimped shock absorbers of a monster truck.

She reached into her waistband to pull out her last clip. The target — Madelaine Carter — was directly in front of her, trapped because the only way out was clogged with people tangled with each other and too petrified to sort themselves out. She would have smiled if she’d had that particular face gesture on file. Instead, her face remained impassive, as calm and expressionless as a person fast asleep as she rammed the last clip home into the grip of her handgun.

Sal and Rashim gave the mall guard — Kent — a thoroughly unconvincing pair of aliases and random contact numbers. The guard, though, seemed more than happy to take down what they said, no questions asked. Quite probably he was preoccupied with thanking God he was alive still. He offered a nod — Sal guessed that was his version of a ‘sorry for earlier’ — and told them to go home.

They now picked their way through the crowd at the front of the mall. A slew of police cars had parked up in a semi-circle just outside the entrance and officers were setting up a cordon around it, urging the rubbernecking curious back away from the rotating glass doors at the front.

‘Good grief… that was…’ Rashim wiped sweat from his forehead.

‘Close?’

He nodded. ‘Incredibly.’

‘They’re the same ones that were chasing me and Maddy before we came back in time to get you.’

‘Almost identical to your support units. They were definitely a similar batch number. Quite possibly from the exact same batch.’

A possibility occurred to Sal as they backed away from the crowd outside and studied the front of the mall from a comfortable distance. There were still people spilling out of the revolving doors, being hustled out of harm’s way as quickly as possible by paramedics, cops and mall guards. Maybe they were a batch of support units that had malfunctioned? Perhaps whoever was running their little agency from the future had decided to send them some replacement support units and something had gone wrong in the process?

She shot that idea down just as quickly as it had popped into her head.

No. There was the San Francisco drop point. That’s where they’d get back-up copies of Bob and Becks — frozen foetuses ready to grow. These were ones already fully grown and given a very specific mission. To come after the whole team and not rest until the last of them were dead. Apparently. So… no mistakes there. No malfunctions. Just deadly intent.

‘You think we should make our way back to that diner?’ said Rashim.

Sal was about to answer when two gunshots came from just inside the mall’s entrance foyer.

A moment later a large plate-glass window exploded and screams ripped through the air. The police who’d set up a cordon to hold the crowd back now drew their sidearms. All of them spinning round to face the glass frontage of the shopping mall. People spilled out of the slowly turning revolving door, the side doors, even through the jagged-tooth remains of the freshly shattered glass frontage.

‘There’s Maddy!’ hissed Sal.

She emerged with the others, arms up and wrapped round her head to protect it, hunkered over like someone getting out of a helicopter. Sal pushed through the crowd now all turning and scattering from the entrance at the sound of another shot fired inside the foyer.

‘MADDY!’ she called out. ‘OVER HERE!’

The girls all but crashed into each other.

‘Maddy? I thought you were — ’

‘Just GO! Gogogogogo! ’

Faith picked her zigzagging target out of the retreating, stampeding crowd. She levelled the. 40 Smith amp; Wesson. Now the thing had a fresh clip, she resolved to empty all twelve rounds in several controlled double-taps. To be absolutely certain of killing the target. As she aimed down the short barrel, she caught sight of one of the other targets: Saleena Vikram. Both girls tangled with each other for a moment, then, turning their backs to her, ran away hand in hand.

Two for the price of one. Faith nodded. Pleased with herself for producing an appropriate saying for the occasion. She was about to pull the trigger when the world went completely dark.