Quinn bent over him. “Nice to see you again.”
“Enjoy your taunts while you can, you inhuman monster. You will issue them no longer once this day is through.”
“You’re good. I admire that. You got off Norfolk in time, which wasn’t easy. And you got down to Earth, which is fucking impossible. Very good. What did you do? Make a deal with the supercops?”
“I know naught of what you speak.”
“Shit. Okay, I’ll put it in real slow retard-speak for you. Who brought you down to Earth?”
When Fletcher didn’t answer, Quinn ran his hand over the iron band securing the man’s forehead. “I can have them increase the voltage you know. It can get a lot lot worse.”
“Only while I remain in this body.”
“Not such a dumb asshole after all.” Quinn crawled sinuously onto the altar beside Fletcher and moved his hooded head right up close. “Before we go any further,” he whispered, “what’s she like to fuck? Come on, you can tell me. Is she hot stuff? Or does she just lie there and take it like a corpse? Just between us. I won’t tell anyone. Does she give good head? Does she like it up the ass?”
“You are unfit to live, sir. I shall relish your fall, for it will be a great one from the height of your arrogance.”
“Don’t tell me you never tried her out? That Louise? She was with you for weeks and weeks. All that time. You must have.” Quinn withdrew a fraction, vaguely puzzled. “Shit, you’re the one that’s not human.”
“Your judgements have neither value nor relevance to me.”
“Oh yeah? There’s one judgement I might interest you in. I’m gonna find out what she’s like. My people will bring her here for me, and then you can watch me and Courtney go to work on her. I’ll make you watch. See how long you can keep that assholing superiority going then. Motherfucker!”
“You will have to find her first.”
“Oh I will. Believe it. Even if the morons I’ve got out there now don’t do it, His army will bring her to me. And then that last little thread of defiance you treasure will snap. You’ll scream and plead and cry, and curse your shitty false Lord for his divine inaction.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. The age of miracles may be past, but His messengers still walk amongst us. You will fail. It is written.”
“Bollocks. There are no messengers. And I’m busy burning the book it’s written in. It’s my Lord who comes, not yours. And He doesn’t move mysteriously. God’s Brother is very blunt, as you’re going to find out. Unless I spare you.”
“I would never be sullied by your mercy, sir.”
“No? Then how about sparing Louise? Join us. Get on the winning side. I’ll give her straight back to you. Won’t touch a hair on her head. Promise. And that’s a lot of hair.”
Fletcher gave a short, bitter laugh.
“I mean it,” Quinn said smoothly. “You’re smart, tough. I could use people like you. You were some sort of officer, right? Half these shitbrains I’ve got working for me can’t find their own ass with both hands. I could put you in charge of a whole bunch of them. You can make out any way you like, then. Marry Louise. Live in a palace. It can’t get any better.”
“I apologize, for I am mistaken. I had thought you dangerous. I see now you are merely small. Our Lord Jesus was offered the kingdoms of the world, and refused. I believe I can resist coveting another man’s wife and some fine living. Have you not yet learned that in this wretched state we can create anything we desire for ourselves? You can offer nothing of any value; you may only rain down empty threats.”
“Empty!” Quinn shouted in rage. “He is coming. My Lord, not yours. If you don’t believe me, ask the ghosts. They can hear the dark angels draw near. His Night will fall. That is the new miracle.”
“Day follows night, as it is now and always will be. Amen.”
Quinn backed off the altar and stood up. He held an anti-memory weapon in front of Fletcher’s face. “Okay, fun-time’s over, dickhead; tell me what this is.”
“I do not know, sir.”
“You were shooting it about pretty freely before. Was it meant for me? Is that why the supercops let you down here? Were you trying to find me for them?” Quinn beckoned.
Frenkel stepped forwards and dumped Billy-Joe’s body on the altar next to Fletcher. The young man’s head flopped about. His eyes were open, unfocused, and he was still breathing.
“We found him like this down at the bottom of the Archway tower. The big black dude managed to shoot him with one of these gadgets before my troops took him out. Now, I can understand a weapon that forces possessors out of their host body. Every fucking scientist in the Confederation must be working on that right now. But this is a little more powerful, isn’t it? Billy-Joe wasn’t a possessed, but it still kicked his soul’s ass out of there.” Quinn smiled, fangs pressing up into white lips as he sensed the worry trickle into Fletcher’s thoughts. “Or did it do more than that? Huh? Those supercops play for the highest stakes there are. They know I can just come back in another body and start the whole crusade up again. Because I can’t die, now can I? We’re all immortal now.”
Fletcher’s face became a mask of stubborn determination.
“Ah,” Quinn said softly. He held the weapon up, regarding it with a new respect. “Let’s try a little experiment, shall we?” His hand made a pass over Billy-Joe, applying energistic force to open a pathway to the beyond. A soul struggled its way up into Billy-Joe’s body. He sat up, wheezing for breath, looking round avidly.
“How about that?” Quinn marvelled. “No strain, no pain. We can speed up the whole resurrection game.” He grinned down at Fletcher. “You know what, in the wrong hands this little toy you brought me could be really dangerous.”
The tenement on Halton Road consisted of three low-cost apartment towers intended for the poor and the elderly. A third of the residents still fell into that category, the rest worked in the black cash economy or lived off the dole, spending their days stimmed out on cheap activant programs and home-synthesised drugs. There were no other amenities for them. The ground between the twenty-storey towers was a concrete yard walled in by rows of small garages. Fading white lines marked out baseball and football pitches, though the baskets and goal posts had been torn out of the ground decades ago. Despite its classical urban erosion demeanour, it was a perfect site for The Disco At The End Of The World.
Andy had been dancing on the worn concrete since sundown, embracing the communal madness. Out of all London’s residents, the type that lived in the tenement had the least to lose when the possessed came marching out of the darkness. So . . . sod it. If you are absolutely going to get captured by the evil dead/tortured/your body consumed by ghouls/live the rest of eternity as a zombie slave, you might as well have one last decent party before it happens.
The underground trax jammers had set up their ageing speaker stacks as twilight fell. When the sun left the sky, out came the pounding rhythm to rattle the windows and sneer an utterly worthless defiance at the arcology’s new overlords. Everyone had dressed for it. That’s what Andy loved. Disco divas in their sequinned micro dresses, hot funk dancers in leather and infra-white shirts, jive masters in sharp suits. All grooving and swaying in one huge dense mass of hot bodies, doing the stupid moves to stupid old songs.
Andy wriggled his hips, and waved his hands, and generally boogied on down like he’d never done before. No need to be self-conscious now, there wouldn’t be a tomorrow morning for people to laugh at him and his coordination. He swigged from the bottles passed round. He snogged a couple of girls. He sang along at the top of his voice. He made up his own cool moves. He cheered and laughed and wanted to know why the hell he’d wasted his life.