“Get away from him, you bastards!”
The three surgeons straightened up and stared at the newcomers with wide, surprised eyes over their face masks. Blood dripped thickly from the instruments in their hands. Daniel raised his Taser and looked around for the missing teenage girl, but couldn’t see her anywhere—which meant there had to be a hidden exit. He was surprised he could still think clearly, in the midst of so many atrocities. But perhaps he needed to, in order to stay sane.
Paul leveled his Taser at all three surgeons impartially.
“Police! You’re under arrest!”
The surgeons looked at one another. One carefully lowered his bone saw, and stepped out from behind the bloody mess he’d been working on.
“But . . . we’re paid up!”
“I am getting really tired of hearing that,” said Daniel. “You can’t bribe your way out of this.”
“Damn right,” said Oscar.
“What have you people been doing here?” said Nigel.
“Just the usual,” said the surgeon. He looked to the other surgeons for support, but they were happy for him to serve as spokesman, so he turned reluctantly back again. “We take the bodies apart, and then ship everything off for transplants. It’s all used up; nothing goes to waste.”
“Where does it all go?” said Daniel.
The surgeon shrugged. “Not our department. Storage, somewhere. There are always orders waiting to be filled.”
“This is sick,” said Oscar.
“That’s not the worst of it,” said Daniel. He gestured angrily at the nearby trestle tables, his hand shaking with the strength of his emotions. “See the heavy restraints, at the wrists and the ankles? All of these people were strapped down, to stop them from struggling.”
Paul looked at him sharply. “You mean . . . they were alive, when these bastards started cutting? Like the one they just butchered?”
Daniel glared at the surgeon. “Why would you do something like that?”
The surgeon shrugged. “Anaesthetics cost money . . . ”
“You little shits,” said Oscar.
“That’s why they put the surgery this far down,” said Daniel. “So no one would hear the screams.”
“They were only homeless people!” the surgeon said quickly. “No one who’ll be missed. At least this way they serve some useful purpose.”
“Someone stop him talking,” said Nigel.
“Love to,” said Oscar.
“We’re shutting this butcher’s shop down,” said Daniel.
“You can’t!” said the surgeon. “This is a Frankenstein Clan operation! We’re protected, by very high-up people!”
“They can go down with you,” said Daniel.
His hand was suddenly entirely steady as he shot the surgeon with his Taser, and the man fell jerking to the floor, trying to force out a scream. Oscar charged forward, not bothering with his own Taser. He raised his baton and clubbed the other two surgeons to the floor, grunting happily with the effort he put into his blows. Blood flew on the air, and the surgeons soon stopped screaming, but Oscar just kept going. And after everything Daniel had seen, he didn’t feel like intervening.
And then the spiky-haired teenage girl burst out of a concealed side door, along with two hulking figures in hospital whites. She stabbed a finger at the policemen, her voice shrill with outrage.
“Kill them! Kill them all!”
The two huge figures lurched forward. Big enough to be serious steroid abusers, their hands opened and closed menacingly as they advanced; but there was something odd in the way they moved, as though their muscles weren’t connected properly, and they couldn’t feel the floor beneath their feet. Most disturbing of all, their faces were completely empty, their eyes fixed and staring. Like dead men walking.
“They’re on something!” said Paul.
Oscar smiled, and hefted his baton. Blood dripped thickly from the extended nightstick.
“Won’t make any difference.”
Paul tasered the nearest big man but he just kept coming, as though he hadn’t felt anything. Oscar charged the other figure and hit him head-on. The man was actually bigger than Oscar, and the two of them grappled clumsily as they wrestled back and forth, crashing into trestle tables and overturning them. Paul dropped his Taser as the first figure advanced on him, and thrust his baton viciously in under the man’s sternum, hard enough to paralyze the heart. The big man didn’t even blink. Huge hands clamped down on Paul’s shoulders, and he cried out in pain. Daniel moved quickly in beside Paul, raining blow after blow on the attacker’s head with his baton, but no blood spurted, and the big man didn’t even seem to notice. Paul was screaming now, as his collarbone shattered under the heavy hands.
The teenage girl advanced on Nigel, grinning nastily. He hesitated, not wanting to hurt a woman—until he saw the look in her eyes, and then he shot her at point-blank range with his Taser. Her grin widened and she surged forward, ignoring the drooping wires and the current they carried. She slapped the Taser right out of his hand. Nigel switched to his baton, and whipped it across her face. She didn’t even flinch. Nigel backed away, and the girl went after him.
Oscar screamed shrilly. Daniel looked round just in time to see the huge figure take a firm hold on Oscar’s head with both hands, and rip it clean off his shoulders. Blood fountained from the ragged neck, splashing against the overhead lights and dripping back again in a crimson rain. Oscar’s body crumpled slowly to the floor.
Paul suddenly stopped screaming. Daniel looked back, to see the massive figure crushing Paul in a bear hug. There was an awful snapping sound as Paul’s back broke, and then the big man just threw him away. Paul hit the ground hard, and didn’t move again. Daniel threw himself at the huge figure, and hit him again and again with his baton, shouting helpless obscenities, and the man slowly turned his head to look at him. The eyes didn’t see him at all. The scalp had been half torn away from the forehead, but there wasn’t any blood. Daniel lowered his baton, and staggered backward.
He saw the teenage girl punch Nigel under the breastbone so hard that blood flew from his mouth, and the light went out of his eyes.
Daniel never knew who hit him from behind. As he fell to the floor, his last thought was, We were set up.
Chapter Two
BACK FROM THE DEAD
It was dark when Daniel woke up. He pushed the bedsheets away and started to sit up, only to stop abruptly when the pain hit him. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. He had that much pride left. He dry-swallowed a handful of pills from the bedside table, breathed slowly and steadily until the pain died back to a bearable level, and then carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed.
It had to be heading out of night and into morning, because enough light made it past the closed curtains for him to make out his surroundings. Not that there was much worth looking at. His flat had only ever been somewhere to come back to, when he wasn’t working. Daniel sighed, and decided he might as well get up. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again.
His pajamas stank from the night’s cold sweats, and he slowly stripped them off and let them drop to the floor. He had difficulty getting dressed, because of what had happened to him in that terrible cellar under the bookstore. Everyone at the hospital kept telling him he was lucky to be alive after so many serious injuries, but he found that hard to accept on days when he had so much difficulty just doing up his shirt buttons. His fingers were numb this morning, which was a good thing. On the really bad days it felt like his hands were on fire.
Daniel finally forced himself up onto his feet and shuffled out of the bedroom, heading for the kitchen. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights. He preferred the gloom, so he wouldn’t have to look at what his life had become. He moved slowly around the kitchen, getting out the mug and the tea bags and turning on the electric kettle. He found the ritual comforting, even though he wasn’t sure he actually wanted any tea.