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“Could be a clue as to where he’s gone,” said Suzie. “Hope so. I really want to kill this one.”
“I’ll try it,” I said. “If it looks like it’s a trap, or the memory’s . . . getting to me, slap the bloody thing out of my hand.”
“Got it,” said Suzie.
She put her shotgun away, and moved in close beside me as I nerved myself to pick up the crystal. It looked like such a small, i
To my surprise, a giant screen appeared, floating in mid air in the middle of the lobby. And from Suzie and Chandra’s immediate reactions, it was clear they could see it, too.
“This isn’t what I was expecting,” I said.
“He must have modified the crystal,” said Chandra, frowning. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“You can’t,” I said. “At least, not without access to really high tech.”
“He probably just touched it,” said Suzie. “And it had no choice but to do what he and his god wanted.”
We thought about that. What could be so terrible, that we couldn’t experience it first hand, but only on the screen?
“How do we activate the thing?” said Suzie.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you just say Start!”
And the huge screen came to life and showed us awful things.
It wasn’t a memory. Or a sensory experience. It wasn’t even POV. It showed us a view of the lobby, with men and women standing around, talking quietly. They all seemed quite happy, and relaxed. Ordinary men and women, going about their ordinary business. They had no idea what was coming. No idea who was coming for them. They all looked round in surprise as the door suddenly opened, all the locks and security measures disengaging by themselves. And then the Walking Man strode in, with a smile on his lips and murder in his eyes, his long duster coat flapping about him like some Wild West preacher come to dispense brimstone and hellfire.
The men and women were still looking at him, puzzled and a little taken aback, like hosts presented with an unexpected guest. I wanted to call out and warn them, but there was no way my voice could reach them. The Walking Man’s coat opened by itself, falling back to reveal a simple white shirt over worn blue jeans and two large pistols holstered head to head across his flat stomach. The guns seemed almost to leap into his hands as he reached for them; old-fashioned Wild West pistols, with long barrels and wood grips. Peacemakers, the guns Wyatt Earp and his brothers used to tame helltowns like Tombstone. The Walking Man was still smiling when he began killing people.
He strode forward into the lobby, shooting the men and women before him with casual, practised skill. No warnings, no chance to surrender, no mercy. He shot them in the head or in the chest, and he never needed more than one bullet. The screaming started then, as surprise turned to shock, and to horror. People fell back as bodies crashed to the floor, and blood and brains flew on the air. The Walking Man never missed, and he never shot to wound, and though he fired and fired without pausing his guns never ran out of bullets. By now the lobby was full of shouting and screaming and pleading, and the sound of continuous gunfire. Some tried to run, and the Walking Man shot them in the back, or in the back of the head.
The huge guns bucked and roared in the Walking Man’s hands, but his aim was always perfect, and he never grew tired. His smile actually widened a little as he worked his way through the lobby, as though the killings invigorated him. Bullets slammed into bodies like sledgehammers, throwing men and women backwards, or slamming them to the ground. Arms flailed wildly amongst spurting blood, and heads exploded in flurries of blood and brains. The Walking Man stepped over kicking bodies, to get at those who remained.
Some pleaded, some protested, some even sank to their knees and begged for their life, tears streaming down their faces. The Walking Man killed them all anyway. A few tried to fight back. They drew guns and knives, and even beat at him with their bare hands. But bullets bounced off him, knives couldn’t cut him, and he didn’t seem to feel their blows. He was the wrath of God in the world of men, and no-one could stop him doing anything he wanted.
Some men pulled hysterical women before them, to use as human shields. The Walking Man killed the women, then the men behind them. Until finally he stood in the centre of the lobby and looked around him. No-one had escaped. The floor was heaped with the dead, the last of their life’s blood soaking into the rich carpeting. The only sound came from the teenage receptionist, crying loudly, hopelessly, in her chair behind her desk. The Walking Man shot her through the left eye. Her head snapped back, and her brains stained the wall behind her.
He walked unhurriedly across the lobby, sometimes kicking bodies out of his way, until he came to the door at the far end. He paused there a moment, then picked up a dead man’s arm to press the bloody hand against the door, leaving a clear bloody handprint. A sign of where he’d gone. The view on the screen followed him through the door and down the steps he found there, to the next level. At the bottom of the steps, another heavy door, with state-of-the-art electronic locks and security devices. The Walking Man looked at them, and, one by one, the locks snapped open and the security devices disengaged. The door swung slowly open as he approached it.
The Walking Man entered a long, narrow room full of computers and assorted technology. Someone had money for the very best. The Walking Man passed them by, indifferent. He did pause to consider hundreds of memory crystals growing in a thick, shimmering liquid bath, inside a wide glass-and-steel lattice. The equivalent of a DVD-pressing plant, perhaps. The technicians working in the room looked round sharply as he entered, then rose quickly from their chairs and backed away as they saw the guns in his hands. One of them hit an alarm, and a raucous electronic howl filled the room. Armed men came ru
He killed them all anyway. Guards and technicians, armed and unarmed. His bullets punched clean through the body armour as easily as through the technician’s white lab coats. Weapons couldn’t touch him, couldn’t stop him. He walked unhurriedly forward and killed everyone before him. Once again there was shouting and screaming, and pleas for mercy, and blood and brains on the air and on the floor, but the Walking Man never stopped smiling. A cold, grim, satisfied smile. When they were all dead, he systematically smashed the crystal lattice, and half-formed crystals splashed on to the floor, and the Walking Man crushed them under his boots.
Another door, at the far end. More stairs, down to the next level. The defences there were really hard core. They would have stopped anyone else. As the Walking Man reached the bottom of the stairs, heavy-duty gun barrels protruded from both walls and opened fire on him. The din in the confined space was appalling, as the guns pumped out thousands of rounds per minute, but he strode unflinchingly through the smoke and the noise, and none of the bullets could touch him. His coat wasn’t holed or tattered, or even scorched by proximity to the red-hot gun barrels. The guns finally fell silent, and the Walking Man went on.
Further down the hallway, energy guns slid smoothly out of the walls, future or alien technology from some Timeslip or another. They blasted the Walking Man with all kinds of energies and radiations, strange lights flaring in the dimly lit hallway, and none of it affected him in the least. He grabbed one gun barrel as he passed, ripping it effortlessly from its mounting. He examined it briefly, then threw it aside, never slowing his pace for a moment.