The Beauty of Destruction (56 page)

It’s because you’ve always
liked fighting.
She tried to ignore the thought.

‘We need to get moving,’ du Bois said. He was affixing the new sight to the Purdey. Grace glared at him, and then went back to kicking boxes around with the toe of her motorcycle boot.

‘Why? What are we going to do?’ Alexia asked. ‘Everyone’s already killing everyone else. What more have we got to offer?’

Grace straightened up and looked over at Alexia.

‘We’re killing Mr Brown,’ she said simply. Beth was aware of du Bois taking a deep breath. She looked over at him. Grace saw the look.

‘Why pick a fight with him?’ Alexia demanded.

‘What’s going on?’ Grace asked du Bois.

‘There’s a way out,’ he said. Grace choked off incredulous laughter.

‘There
might
be a way out,’ Beth corrected.

‘There’s a way out if we can get to Kanamwayso,’ Grace said, pointing towards where she knew the ocean was, ‘where all the bad shit out there is coming from; and your evidence that there’s a way out is the hallucination you had during a psychotic episode, brought on by contact with the same fucking Seeders at the Federal Building. You know if we fucking hesitate here Mr Brown gets away!’

‘How are we going to kill him?’ Alexia demanded.

‘The nuke,’ Grace said irritably, barely glancing at Alexia before turning back towards du Bois.

‘You’re out of your mind,’ Alexia said. Grace rounded on her.

‘What did you fucking think we were doing?’ she shouted, making Alexia flinch. ‘Did you think we were all going to become fucking astronauts? Grow up!’

‘That’s enough,’ du Bois said.

‘Is it? This was why I was fucking helping you! Were you lying to me?’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than th—’ du Bois started.

‘Were you lying to me?’ she screamed at him.

‘We misled you,’ Beth said. Grace turned round to look at her. The punk had shifted her carbine so she could more easily bring it to bear. Beth was pretty sure it was an unconscious gesture but it made her uneasy. She tried not to do the same with the
LMG
hanging down her front on its sling. ‘Not entirely on purpose. We’re making this up as we go along.’

‘So what’s your plan?’ Grace asked. She looked between the three of them.

‘Palm Springs,’ Alexia finally suggested, but nobody laughed.

‘We use King Jeremy’s leverage—’ du Bois started. Grace nodded.

‘Negotiate?’ Grace asked quietly. Du Bois didn’t answer. ‘The leverage is a threat. In order for it to work he needs to know there’s a possibility he can survive. You’re going to let him live, aren’t you?’ Du Bois still didn’t answer her. ‘Want to hold me down so he can rape me again wearing your face?’ she asked very quietly. Du Bois looked away from her. ‘Look me in the eyes, you cowardly piece of shit!’ Du Bois didn’t.

‘Tell her,’ Beth said.

‘Tell me what?’ Grace asked.

‘Remember when we thought we were doing good work?’ du Bois asked, though Beth was pretty sure he was still struggling with the punk girl’s actual existence and couldn’t remember what they had actually done together. ‘When we thought we were saving the souls of the best of humanity, the scientists, artists, engineers, poets, musicians?’ Grace barely nodded. Du Bois tapped his head. ‘I have them. Up here. The Brass City stole them. Hamad gave them to me when I killed him, and then I hid the knowledge, even from myself.’

‘And?’ Beth prompted.

‘And the City of Brass found them,’ du Bois said.

‘They’re like the Library of Alexandria,’ Grace surprised Beth a little by saying. ‘They would have taken a copy.’ Du Bois nodded, still struggling to look at her. ‘So they’re safe.’

‘They’re not human in there,’ du Bois said.

‘They only exist until they are compromised,’ Beth added.

‘So?’

‘This is hope,’ du Bois said, finally managing to look at her.

‘No,’ Grace said. ‘This is an out-of-control messianic complex and one too many Charlton Heston films. “Let my people go,” Malcolm? Really?’

She was right. Beth knew she was right.

‘So our last act is just to try and kill everyone? Stop anyone from getting off this yeast infection of a planet?’ Alexia asked. She was scratching at her skin.

Beth could see the pollen-like Seeder spores in the air. She was pretty sure that she was only able to do this because of her augments.

‘Even in the highly unlikely chance it works …’

‘Evacuation was what the Circle was geared up to do,’ du Bois pointed out.

‘Before the Seeders woke up, but if by some miracle this does work, all you do is give that fucker a much larger playground.’

‘What is “hope” for you, then?’ Beth asked.

‘The slight chance I can survive being reasonably close to a tactical nuclear explosion, and then I go looking for the Brass City.’

Du Bois opened his mouth to retort.

Beth held up her hand. ‘Okay, we’re going in to talk to them. You cover us. When you’ve had enough then you pull the trigger,’ Beth told her. Grace stared at her. Du Bois opened his mouth again. ‘No. She’s got a point.’ She cut him off and then turned to Grace. ‘You get to decide.’

Of course it might not matter. The deal could have already been struck. Mr Brown and the
DAYP
could already be on their way, though if the nuke had gone off they would have seen it. It had started to rain. The rain was gritty, unpleasant, and tasted of salt. They had risked the motorway,
freeway
, Beth corrected herself. It was the fastest route. Du Bois was driving now. With the CROWS turret out of action there was no requirement for gunners. He was using the weight of the vehicle, and its superior armour, to barrel through other vehicles and roadblocks. She convinced herself that the bullets hitting the armour sounded like the rain.

As they came over the Vincent Thomas Bridge, being pursued by an armoured tow truck with a snowplough attached to the front, Beth could almost convince herself things were normal. The Port of Los Angeles, and the Port of Long Beach, looked reasonably untouched. Except for the root-like tendrils that had grown up the bridge’s suspension towers. Their dark mottled flesh had burst where they had released their spores. Except for the two container ships and the oil tanker that had been partially dragged by the tendrils down into the water, a black puddle spreading outwards from the tanker. Except for the smoke rising from the Federal Correctional Institution out on one of the artificial islands, bodies hanging from its walls. Even if the inmates had weathered the initial electronic attack through the communications network they would have succumbed to the spores by now. Except the helicopters in the air over Long Beach, and further south, Huntington and Laguna Beach, much of it burning as the Marines from Camp Pendleton slowly ‘took back’ the city. The shape of the helicopters looked wrong somehow.

They had caught a glimpse of the submarine from the bridge. It was docked on the north side of the farthest, boot-shaped, artificial island in the Port of Los Angeles. A modified Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast-attack boat.

They had come off the freeway and headed down Navy Way next to the train lines and onto the artificial island. It was a bumpy ride where the tendrils had grown through the road and taken root in the concrete of the actual island itself. They could see the overgrown cranes, places where the stacked containers had fallen over.

They drove past the entrance to the container yard and pulled up. Grace climbed out of the back. She had swapped weapons with Beth. She was carrying the Model 0
LMG
and the last of the belted ammunition. Beth, in turn, was carrying the punk girl’s N6 carbine, magazines for the weapon, and the remaining grenades for the grenade launcher. Grace also had du Bois’s Purdey. It had looked like it had been a wrench for him to hand the weapon over until his sister had snapped at him, pointing out that it was only a gun. The punk girl had four of the 7.62mm nanite-tipped bullets for the sniper rifle.

‘How long?’ du Bois asked. Beth was pretty sure that Mr Brown knew they were there. There was only one road onto this part of the port. His erstwhile employer would be a fool not to have Navy Way under observation.

‘Half an hour,’ Grace said. Du Bois was already shaking his head. Half an hour wasn’t a long time to effect a stealth infiltration. ‘Fifteen minutes.’ Then she turned and ran into the rain towards the stacks of containers.

‘This is fucking stupid,’ Alexia muttered. Beth wasn’t sure that she disagreed.

‘If we can get out, if we can do something here, then I want you with me,’ du Bois said. ‘But you’re right. This will probably end badly. If you want to go, go.’ Alexia didn’t say anything. Instead she reached over and hugged her brother.

It had seemed like a very long fifteen minutes, then they had started towards the submarine’s berth. They had not got very far before they had started taking fire. Most of the incoming fire was from small arms and machine guns. Alexia jumped and swore when first a fifty calibre round, and then a 40mm grenade, exploded against the armour, rocking the heavy vehicle. A rocket exploded nearby, another in the air, but the larger weapons never seemed to hit them. Beth assumed that this was because Grace was doing her job of providing sniper cover, taking out the heavier weapons that could actually damage the Cougar. Through the rain and gunfire she caught glimpses of their attackers. They were clearly military trained, but their uniforms looked wrong. They were dressed like somebody’s idea of post-apocalyptic pirates. She guessed that the surviving members of the
DAYP
had customised some of the Marines from Camp Pendleton to fit in with their new environment when they had slaved them. It smacked of the
DAYP
’s video game reality. The white sheet they were hanging off the armoured 6
×
6 truck as a white flag had to be in tatters now.

In the headlights of the Cougar, Beth could make out figures standing by the submarine’s boarding ramp, her eyes cutting through the rain and general gloom of the day. She saw a gunman take cover behind an armoured Mustang muscle car. The woman with the silver mask – du Bois and Grace had referred to her as the Pennangalan – and Mr Brown, leaning on a staff with drips hanging from it, were both there. Mr Brown’s hand shaded his eyes as he peered into the truck’s headlights. Du Bois drove steadily and slowly towards the obsidian figure of his old boss. Beth was now sure there were two figures hiding behind the Mustang, both dressed in ridiculous post-apocalyptic outfits she suspected that they had seen in a film, or in a computer game.

Du Bois stopped as close as he dared get to Mr Brown, parking the Cougar next to a stack of cargo containers, and waited. Bullets rained down on their armour. If they hadn’t been able to filter out most of the noise it would have been deafening. Suddenly Beth started laughing. Du Bois and Alexia turned around to look at her as if she was mad.

‘I think you’ve both been doing this too long,’ she told them. Mr Brown looked like he was having a shouted conversation with one of the figures behind the muscle car. The figure stood up and waved his hands around, apparently to illustrate his point. He had a large and heavy-looking rucksack on his back.

‘That’s the nuke, isn’t it?’ Alexia said as the gunfire stopped. Du Bois just nodded. Without the gunfire they could make out the four figures in front of them better. King Jeremy, aka Weldon Rush, and Dracimus, aka Torsten Elling. Both of them looked like Aryan high school jocks at a
Mad Max
fancy dress party. Dracimus was aiming an AR-10, modified to fire enormous .50 calibre Beowulf rounds, at their truck. King Jeremy had a .50 calibre Desert Eagle in his right hand. She had to magnify her vision to work out what he was holding in his left hand. A dead man’s switch, presumably attached to the nuke in his backpack. Du Bois had called it correctly. Anything happened to King Jeremy and his thumb came off the button, then everyone died. It seemed that the Do As You Please clan had found something that actually threatened Mr Brown. Beth looked down at King Jeremy’s face. The insanity was written all over it, it was in his cold green eyes, and she suspected that at this moment it stemmed from fear as much as anything else. She knew that Grace would be looking through a scope at King Jeremy right now. At any moment she expected a bullet to hit the
DAYP
clan leader, and then there would be a very bright light, and she would cease to exist, but nothing happened. Strangely, she didn’t feel frightened. More resigned. She almost wished it was over because this, all of this, she could almost understand. If their plan worked then she knew that she would have no frame of reference for whatever happened next.

Du Bois looked over at her, then his sister. She nodded, as did Alexia. Beth drew and checked her
OHWS
, du Bois did the same with his .45. They opened the doors and jumped out into light, raised weapons, and shouting. Lots of shouting. The air was thick with nanites. The Seeder spores were in conflict with what Beth could only imagine was some kind of industrial-strength blood-screen. She suspected that Mr Brown must have some kind of S- or L-tech nanite factory nearby, protecting the area from the Seeder spores.

Beth had her pistol levelled at King Jeremy, and nothing would have given her more pleasure than to squeeze the trigger. Du Bois’s weapon was aimed at Dracimus. Alexia’s ARX-170 was aimed at the Pennangalan, for all the good it would do. Dracimus, despite, presumably, being extensively augmented himself, looked terrified. The Beowulf rifle was steady, however, as it was aimed back at du Bois. The silver-masked woman had her weapon up and was aiming it at Beth. King Jeremy had raised his pistol. He looked more tense than frightened right now. Marines in post-apocalyptic pirate chic also surrounded them. Everyone was shouting at them to put their guns down, except for Mr Brown and the Pennangalan. The three of them waited, expecting to be cut down in a hail of gunfire. Expecting to see King Jeremy die and his thumb slip off the dead man’s switch. Nothing happened. Nobody shot. Eventually Mr Brown motioned for everyone to be quiet.