Consolidati, p.1
Consolidati, page 1
Consolidati
W.B. Bjorn
For Elaine
Consolidati
Copyright © 2013 by William Blake Bjorn
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0615742122
ISBN-13: 978-0615742120 (Consolidati)
Cover Art Designed by Rudy Murdock
Consolidati
W.B. Bjorn
Book I
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
1
Shadow enfolded this house in the Outskirts of London. The streets forking their way around the structure were dusty, without electricity, without so much as a rat to scurry in their corners. Like a pair of lungs saturated with tar, the area fought a losing battle for its own existence. There were other houses, but no longer a neighborhood. No one lived there but the small party hiding in this house—and they wanted desperately to remain undiscovered.
Inside, Sefu’s chair creaked in relief from his colossal weight as he stood up and picked his way carefully through the sleeping figures lying on the floor. He reached the window, using his index finger to draw back the thick black tarp that they had installed to prevent their heat signatures from escaping into the street. In the last hour a low hanging fog had obscured all light from the moon and stars. The grey pressed down like a falling ceiling. He glanced quickly in all directions, hardly breathing, and let the tarp fall back again.
Nothing. Nothing visible. Then why was he so on edge? A long time they had run, and a long time his instincts had kept them alive, and now it was only them, their little group, hiding in this tiny cage like insects under grains of rice.
He turned around to find his wife, Nkiruka, sitting up. She was watching him intently. He knew she recognized his tension.
“He is here?” she mouthed to him. Her eyes betrayed little fear. She only looked ready—ready to run.
He could only bite down hard on his jaw and shake his head. For years they had lived in the Outskirts and escaped detection in the nights with cautious migration. Every night of the month a new squat, and never in the same order. Their ward against evil was the systematic erraticism. He sighed quietly in his chair. Their system was proven to work, but what can be proven to work forever? Nkiruka rose from the blankets where their son Faraji was still sleeping and made her way over to him, putting her arms around his neck and head, as if to help him think.
“Something is wrong?” she whispered in his ear. “We should wake them?”
Sefu looked across the floor of the room where the others slept. They were all long-time friends or family. Stephen, Afia, and Amadi under a pile of blankets in the far corner. Agni and Nara were sleeping together near the door to the hall. The huge figure of Gus was coiled in the middle of the room next to his tiny daughter, Jess. Jozef and Wit slept apart not far away.
There were twelve of them in total and they all knew what to do in the event of their discovery. If their party was set upon, most would stay to fight, while Gus would take Jess, Nkiruka, and Faraji and run for the old tube tunnels, from which they would try to navigate their way into the city proper. The old tubes were dark and dangerous, and most of the adults knew their chances of even reaching the city were poor at best. This had been their plan since the day Gus’s wife Katherine had failed to return to them one day the previous summer. She was not the first to vanish but the whole group missed her painfully, so much that some suggested they call their pursuers to them and mount a last stand. Sefu had persuaded them away from that suicidal course. This plan had been their compromise, and he knew they would stick to it—most were tired of running.
“I don’t know. I feel he is here, but I do not see him.”
“We should prepare for him, or leave now,” she said quietly. Her eyes were sad, and she tightened her grip on him.
“To go outside,” he said, “even to run away, is not a safe thing. What if he does not come? We will be split. We will have no shelter. We will be less safe out there than in here. You know this.”
She looked at him slowly, nodded.
“I will keep watch the rest of the night,” he said, “Stay with Faraji. Be ready to leave quickly. That is all we can do.”
He rose once again and went to the window to peer outside. This time he remained there with one eye at the side of the tarp. The fog rolled slowly past them, moving ever downward. The other buildings were dark, silent, their windows broken like jagged teeth, their bricks eroded. Perhaps they were even empty, but he couldn’t say for certain.
He stayed like that a long time while the others slept until finally, with a flutter, something caught his eye.
It was not what he had expected. It was only a bird.
A raven had detached from one of the many broken lampposts on the street. Sefu had not seen it perching there. The bird beat the air with a strange awkwardness, circling just below the ceiling of fog and, to his great dismay, descended immediately toward the house and landed in front of the window. Even in the foggy half-light, he could see the bird was looking up at him—directly at him. Its eyes were not the eyes of a bird. They luminesced, glowed, focused and twisted inside like the lens of a camera. He had never seen anything like it before, but he knew what it meant: almost a decade of hiding, scrounging a living in this rubbish heap of a district, eating vegetable grown in tips, standing by helplessly as friends and family vanished, all this was at an end for him. He had no idea what this bird was, except an omen. As if to confirm his suspicions, the animal fluttered and leapt toward the window and gave the glass one great thrust with its beak.
It cracked. The sound woke most of the party. The room, which had been so quiet not a second before, burst into a quiet pandemonium. Sefu was whispering to everyone to wake up, that they had been found. Nkiruka and Gus were the first on their feet and Sefu ran to his wife, who was holding back tears, and kissed her.
“Go now, my love,” he said, even as the others were arming themselves with whatever rudimentary weapons they had collected over the years.
“You kill him. For our son,” she said fiercely, and she gathered Faraji into her arms and followed Gus to the back door. Sefu breathed a silent prayer as it closed behind them. He was glad she had not looked back at him.
I will try.
The remaining eight including himself stood in the room, weapons in hand, looking at each other. Their emotions were many. Some faces looked angry, others resigned, others afraid. They looked uncertainly to him for direction. He knew they were outmatched, that their bats, knuckledusters, wooden planks, and knives were no match for whatever was about to come at them.
“Listen!” he started. “Kill their leader if you can. The pale one, the one with black veins. Watch behind you. Remember that we cannot see some of them. Get away from the windows. Act qui . . .”
The splintering of the front door cut him off. It flew off its hinges and landed on Amadi, who had been the closest. A darkly clad man walked deliberately through the gaping doorway. He wore a cowl that obscured his face and a pitch black cloak that swirled around him. The man came with a force that slowed time for Sefu, but he also brought with him something far deadlier.
A nefarious smell entered the room.
The squatters began to choke and gasp even as the man stepped into the room. The noxious perfume writhed in their lungs and their eyes bulged and watered from the pain. Sefu watched as his comrades sank to their knees, holding their throats. The man in black walked unaffected into the center of the room, close enough for any of them to touch him, and close enough for them to see his face. A ghastly white face with thin black implants that traced his veins and ran the length of his skull down to his forehead. Sefu’s lungs burned, but he stayed standing. The air threatened to paralyze him. The man in black stopped before him, watching smugly as he struggled. His expression seemed to say You have deserved this for a long time. Even as Sefu towered over the other man, he felt as if he were in the presence of a vengeful god.
In one last effort, Sefu surged toward the other and gipped his neck. His hands closed with all their strength. He lifted the other’s feet from the ground and tried to crush his windpipe. The movement would have killed a different man instantly. But the man in black remained in his hands, like a rag doll, without struggling, without so much as a kick, without any cry, eyes open and staring directly into Sefu’s with a cold vengeful intelligence. Suddenly, Sefu cried out in pain as lightning shot into his body. It flowed from the other’s body into his. A hurricane of electric cackling and the smell of burning flesh tainted the air. Sefu wanted to let go. He wanted to make it stop, but the electricity constricted his hands and locked them into place. His lungs burned with toxicity. His body was failing. He felt pain beyond any act of will.
Wizard . . . Devil!
The electricity stopped and Sefu fell unconscious to the floor. The man in black settled lightly on his feet where Sefu had lifted him from the ground. All the squatters lay prone and unmoving.
De-camo.
The man in black spoke the word in his mind. He pulled out a pistol, pointed it down at Sefu and shot him twice in the head.
With his command, seven men in gas masks and carrying assault rifles appeared from thin air near the door. They each positioned themselves above one of the squatters and followed their leader’s example. When they had finished they piled the bodies together in the center of the room and set the place alight.
Colonel, asked Gene when they were outside, they got tipped. Just who on ea
Hurn, the man in black, spoke into his skullcom.
A job for tomorrow. Tonight we find the ones that escaped.
Yessir.
The seven men disappeared again into the blackness of the night streets and Hurn led them on the trail of the four escaped squatters. They left the derelict mansion to burn like a funeral pyre, its smoke mingling with the fog. For minutes the area seemed empty again and nothing moved. No sounds rivaled the bellows of the fire.
Again, a flutter of wings cut through the air.
Left behind, the raven perched on a rooftop opposite the burning building. It took flight and circled above the haunted ground, eyes like cameras, recording everything in its animal brain. It whipped back and forth in an unseen conflict of wills, and finally winged mournfully to the north. Following the hunters.
2
The streets were beginning to thin of people as the light of the sun descended slowly past the dark outline of the buildings. With time to spare, Blake, like so many other times in his life, was relying on his wanderlust to keep him occupied. He pressed on—going nowhere in particular. A woman walked quickly past him in the opposite direction. Many others followed suit, people flitting in and out of focus. One woman wore a t-shirt adorned with two robots atop a neon pyramid. The traffic light before them shifted and her boots clip-clopped as she stepped briskly out of sight. Hundreds more danced into view, only to be unceremoniously forgotten. Lamps were beginning to ignite, but still darkness hadn’t quite settled across the sky above.
Blake saw a shadowed alley and turned into it, earning him a few quizzical looks from fellow pedestrians. The alley led him straight to a fire escape bolted to the red brick wall of a four storied apartment building. Dark flecks of paint clung to his hands as he started to climb toward the roof and the still starless sky.
He stepped up gingerly and surveyed the surrounding panorama of London. He wasn’t sure where in the city he was located, but he saw the evening’s final destination to the west. The Thames labored along in the distance like a lumbering grey leviathan. And far away he could see the clock tower, parliament, and the Eye – none of which could hold his attention for long in the face of London’s newest additions. This vantage point afforded him a look at four of the newly finished projects; their scale made them impossible to miss. Villa 1 to the northwest was a construction of huge swooping jagged edges. Villa 2 to the north was all circles and domes. Villa 3 to the east caught one’s eye with its geometric shapes, great triangles, crosses, and stars melded together. And then there was the massive form of Villa 6, which blocked Villas 4 and 5 from view. The most recent of the construction projects, Villa 6 was undoubtably the most impressive of the bunch. It’s shape was vaguely angelic—with two soaring wings on either side of the main structure. The building was built with a skin that was capable of displaying anything. Now it was simply lit with a brilliant white light.
He was overjoyed to find that some of the building's tenants had left several rusted metal lawn chairs on the roof. Eyeing a reliable-looking seat, he lowered himself cautiously, and found it stable. Above the lamp light of the street, stars now freckled the vaulted royal sky – brilliant beings among a dull crowd. Sliding the chair closer to the edge of the building and easing his feet onto the small wall, he reclined leisurely and emptied his smoking materials from his pockets.
He started arranging the ingredients with the willful air of an artist before a rambunctious gust of wind flung everything onto the ground and sent Blake into a flurry of curses. He began again and soon held out the finished product, as if for the benefit of some invisible critic. He returned the materials to his pocket and took out his lighter.
The lighter sparked and excess paper flamed and burned away. Blake drew from it with big greedy breaths and deep, relaxed exhales. He shifted back in the chair; the lights of the city gradually began to brighten even as his brain began to cloud with mellow green smoke. He toked and leaned his head back and tried with only a little success to keep his mind off what he would do later that night. Fear, trepidation, and excitement rose to the surface. So much could go wrong with nothing to balance out the risk. The only scenario in which his actions would be acknowledged would be if he were caught. Worst case. To him, that felt good, righteous even. He preferred to live that way. His traffic light ended when he heard police sirens several blocks away. They jerked him mercifully back to the rooftops. He exhaled.
The chill of the night air put the cherry out, and when Blake tried to draw, his tongue met with an unpleasant ashy taste. He made a face and spat. Several times, he tried to light it again, but was unable, and finally he tossed the remains over the side. Leaning forward over the edge of the building, Blake let the sights and sounds of the city wash over him all at once. Looking across, at the neon florescence of shop signs, the black of the streets, red and brown of houses, the flashes of opalescent street names in the white lights of shining cars, it all seemed to form one giant make-up for a strange and beautiful organism. Cities had always entranced Blake, especially from heights. Viewing it like this, from a hawk’s nest, made it harder to think about the cruelties that crept and slunk about the city. Some skulking in its basest depths, other secreted away in the highest towers and skyscrapers. He stayed there a long time, gazing outward and upward in an atmosphere of willed ignorance.
He rose to leave and swung his legs back onto the old and flaking fire escape and began to descend back down to the alley. For a moment, the task ahead crept unbidden into his mind, but before he was halfway down from the roof, the sound of breaking glass shattered the peace of the city. A car alarm sounded. Back down to the real world, he thought.
The disturbance came from down another street at the opposite entrance to the alley. Blake could not see the car or the thief, so he continued to lower himself down into the dimness of the alley, trying to muffle the noises his shoes made on the escape. Finally, he touched down on the gravelly cement and walked hastily in the opposite direction of the sound. He wanted no part of burglary, especially if he did not know from whom he was stealing. Just before he rounded the corner and entered the relative safety of the street ahead, a bobby stepped out from the shadows into the right side of Blake’s vision. The policeman cut a huge outline on the cusp of the alley. Probably heading in the same direction of the car alarm, the big man’s eyes narrowed with suspicion when he noticed Blake.
