Dirty Work: Volume 1

Cold Space - 7

Waiting in the shadows and hearing the man coming closer, the man no longer human but something smaller, worse, more. Feeling hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Knowing you have the advantage of surprise and firepower but fearing something else, a trap from the other side, the hunter becoming the hunted. These are all the feelings and sensations that went through the two of us as we lurked in the darkness as the thing moved across the doorway.

Standing there, sniffing the air with a nose that had shrunk back into his skull, now no more than a pair of slits on his face, we could only see his ragged outline. The strips of cloth from the clothes he had once worn were hanging off him, and he looked more like a demonic imp than the animal he thought he was. More greyhound than a great wolf of the night. And yet the lank, lean arms on spindly legs that you could wrap a thumb and forefinger around were poised in such a way that one could see the power in them. Power that shouldn't be there but was. The power of the drug.

He sniffed the air, fingers on the doorframe twitching, as if tapping a rhythm. My heart was thumping louder now, and I was sure, as perhaps everyone is in tense situations where one must hide, that the enemy could hear the beating of the tell-tale heart. I almost moved a hand from my gun to my chest to try and still it, to muffle it in case the thing should hear.

It took a step into its little cave and Ashrore fired.

The blast lit up the place like a flare, light bouncing off every wall and blinding us temporarily. When we could see again, not even a second after firing, the thing was gone.

'Misssssed!' she cursed. 'Come on, after it!'

She leapt through the door and spun to the right. As I was stepping out after her, the thing barrelled into her and the gun went flying, sliding across the floor like a hockey puck. It had its hands around her throat and Ashrore was desperately trying to beat it off, trying to push away its teeth that were bearing down on her face.

I jumped over to her and put my gun to the thing's head.

It turned to look at me the second I pulled the trigger, and in that moment I saw the man the thing once was. I saw in his eyes the recognition of mankind, looking past the mist of the drug and out of the little core of humanity that he still had somewhere in the depths of his being. I saw reflections of a life, of a big sister he had admired for the beginnings of his life, her sudden panic in the night when the police were knocking on the door and her scampering out of his bedroom window. His eventual street-bound wandering in ripped and torn clothes, stealing for scraps for mere survival. Wandering through the streets of the lowest regions, scaling the great landfills of Region 89 for the sticky residues at the bottom of packets and cans. I saw him stumbling across a cluster of men who took him on, got him hooked. I saw him watch himself, look at his hands as he slowly saw them turn into paws, claws to rip people apart, men, women and children all alike in taste and the abundance of flesh. I saw him slinking down into the tunnels, his nose now tuned to the smell of the drug.

It snarled it me, spittle flying from its rows of razor teeth.

I pulled the trigger and scattered its brains across the tunnels.

The body flew and chased Ashrore's gun. It jerked a little in death spasms before going limp. I helped Ashrore to her feet.

'Briefcassssse?' she asked. I looked around me and saw the black case propped up against the wall, where the thing had obviously put it before checking to see if his lair was secure. I opened it up and checked it, seeing everything still in there.

'Everything,' I said.

'Let's get out of here then,' Ashrore said. 'We can send someone back for the money once we know what the boss thinks.'

I wanted to go back and reclaim to body of our fallen comrade, but Ashrore dissuaded me. We needed back-up and opinions on how to handle the aftermath of this particular situation and quick. It was, as she said, out of our hands now.

We left the body of the man there as evidence, should someone want to come down to validate our claims. Walking swiftly with gore matted in our hair from the shot to the head I had delivered, the tunnels should have seemed more open and welcoming with the terror threat dispensed of, but they seemed closer and more labyrinthine. The walls creaked with an intensity I had never heard before, and the water flowed through the pipes and the channels with a gurgling that should never be heard. It may have been all in my head, but then again, maybe not. Who knows with what lies below the streets of the everyman?