First thing Gad knew about it was when the fridge exploded a metre away from her. Half of the“...happened? What...” “Where...” It was me that was horizontal now, not the world that was vertical. I raised my head. Gad was stretched out on the floor, eyes and mouth wide open, and the sleeve of the arm that I'd seen was red. She was shouting something. I was spun around. Someone was grabbing my shoulders. Tomas. Screaming into my face.
“Up! Get up!” And I was back behind a barricade in North-East London, and a cannon shell travelling at five times the speed of sound had gone through the old heavy wrecked fridge that Gad had been crouching near, and the shockwave had sent me to the ocean floor. Now I could appreciate why the police wore proper ear protectors, not the improvised shite that we had. That was just for the subsonics, and it never even worked properly with them either.
“Get the fuck up! Move it!” Tomas let go of me and I nearly fell backwards again. He was looking door span off and bounced off her shoulder – she went down flat but then we all did. I suddenly felt like I was underwater, the whole world was the wrong way up and when I hit the ground it was just righting itself.
I couldn't hear anything through the water. It was very peaceful with my cheek pressed to the tarmac. Then I saw Gad's arm flop in front of me, fingers clutching for something, and the water started to go away and a terrible ringing sound started, with distant shouts.
at Gad now, and I could hear her screaming properly. Her sound bafflers had fallen off and in between the screams she was retching, dry heaves, we know better than to do these things on a full stomach. I spotted them on the ground next to the blood-spattered door, and handed them to Tomas, who put them back on her.
There was another sound now. My phone was going off. It was the geeks' special ring. “Yeah?” I shouted – the sonics were getting louder.
“Did you get hit? They're advancing. Shit. We couldn't stop them. We were so fucking close.”
“What? They're advancing?”
“Yeah, the whole fucking lot of them are fucking charging you and you need to get the fuck out of there right this fucking instant.” The barricade was creaking – we'd built it well, nothing but the heaviest appliances, but they'd sent the round through the base of the thickest pile and I had a feeling the whole lot was going to come down any second. Still, I crawled to one of the look-spaces between two radiators, the phone still pressed to my ear. The geeks were shouting at each other. Something about clouds. Clouds? I looked through and there were three dozen robocops running as fast as they could – not that fast all told – towards us, and in front of them was some guy driving riot armour.
Tomas was trying to move Gad, but every time he tried something she screamed again, and he was looking around in despair, dreads flopping over his face as he tried to think of something to do.
“Tomas! They're coming! They've got an armour, they're going to take the barricade down where they shot it!” He looked at me like I was telling him the football score. “Tomas!” I looked back through the gap and I could see the tank a couple of hundred metres behind them. It seemed to be reversing. The turret was swinging around. The gun was pointing at the sky, then at the ground. I could hear the geeks shouting again.
There was a booming sound and the armour, big black and yellow striped bastard, exploded at the right hip. The leg flew straight forward like it was launching it at us, ninja mecha style, and I ducked, but when I looked back it had just bounced a bit off the road and was lying there twitching, trying to walk on its own. I remembered the individual bits had sub-brains... I remembered one of the geeks telling me it was like a locust... I heard someone say “fuuuuuuuuuck...” on the phone.
The rest of the unit had toppled over, scattering the cops who were following it. The metal on the stump of its hip was glowing red. Tomas was standing next to me on a crate, looking over the top of the radiator pile. He still had his shotgun. I saw the canopy pop open on the armour and a guy rolled out, looking scared to fuck and very small compared to his armour and the suited-up robocops around him.
I heard “Bastard!” from my right and heard a bang, then another. Tomas was firing at the driver. He's not a very good shot, and the guy was a long way away, so nothing seemed to happen. I don't think anyone even noticed. I pulled the leg of his jeans.
“Tomas! Oi! Tomas! Let's get out of it before they move something else in!” The armour was fucked, the tank was still moving back and forwards spastically, but they did have a helicopter somewhere, and this was no time to be shooting at one poor bastard while there were three dozen of his bulletproof mates around just looking for an excuse to put down the batons and get out the guns they'd been waiting since training to use on targets that bleed.
The phone was making a noise; I put it to my ear again.
“there? Anyone listening?”
“Yeah, I'm here. This is Elboy.”
“Uh... look, you better get out of there. That was an accident. We got through to the tank. They'll probably think it's a command signal got buggered by the clouds, but we don't have control or anything, it just did that itself. Their software is shite, you know. The movement is... all tied together with the gun, works from the same basic command protocol and we... look, get out of there. That chopper they were using to buzz the news crews is coming back.”
“Okay.” Tomas was digging cartridges out of his jacket pocket and trying to reload his shotgun. “Christ, Tomas, the chopper's coming back and they've got snipers on it. Snipers! Men with guns! Kill us! Kill Gad! You fucking shooting at them is just going to give them an excuse!”
Tomas looked at me blankly. I've seen the man fucked up on pretty much everything you can buy. The closest here was when he was on acid last year on my birthday after he broke up with Gad the last time, and he got convinced I'd gone back in time to make sure I was born on exactly the right day to make him feel even worse... or something. That evening we'd managed to distract him with a computer game. I had no idea what to do now. Somehow, this sort of extreme mood is far less reasonable when it's a product of circumstances rather than drugs. I know how to deal with people fucked up on drugs. What do you do with a guy who's been fucked up by something that really happened?
“Take Gad back,” I said. “Take her back to the van and we'll get her out of here.” He started to say something. “I know, I know it hurts her to move her, but if we don't they'll kill her. If you don't.” Another few seconds' blank look, as I waited for it to sink in, and then he dropped the shotgun and went to get Gad. I took her feet. We moved her into the van which was waiting in the next street, and drove her to the hospital, told them she'd been fixing a car and it fell on her. We had a credit card, they didn't care.