Minus Life

Bombs and Bombers

Bombs and BombersHe awoke from the dream with a start, mind alive with scenes from burning rooms, searing heat, the stench of singed hair and flesh. Sitting bolt upright, bemused, disorientated, a scream catching in his throat and from somewhere a voice shouting, “Bremen, Bremen for Christ's sake, wake up!”

A hand gripped his shoulder and shook him. “Wake up!”

Bremen turned towards the sound of the voice, unable to focus, an impenetrable film of smoke and dust preventing him from making out shapes or form.

Only when the water splashed over him did he snap out of his confusion. Coughing and spluttering, he wiped a palm over his face. “What the bloody hell?”

The figure moved around the periphery of his vision, slowly emerging from the murkiness. The duty sergeant. “Get your coat, Bremen. A call's just come in, a fire down in the Manchester barracks.”

Bremen swung his legs over the side of the camp bed and leaned forward, clawing his fingers through his hair. “What time is it? I feel like I've been asleep for five minutes.”

“It's quarter past three. You've been flat out for over four hours.”

Stretching out his arms, Bremen yawned, smacked his lips and stood up. He reached for the holstered automatic slung across the back of a nearby chair, and put it over his shoulder. He pulled on his jacket and pushed his feet into his shoes. Yawning again, he shuffled across to the door, “I need a drink.”

The duty sergeant shoved a mug of coffee into Bremen's hand. He took a sip, pulled a face, “s**t. How many sugars have you put in this?”

“Two.”

“Jesus.” He took another mouthful and handed it back to the sergeant. “I take four.”

He went to the door and pulled it open, peering down the silent corridor towards the main exit. There was nobody else around, the collection of desks strewn with papers and over-full ashtrays reminding him, if he needed reminding, the day shift worked far harder than he seemed to. His was a small enforcement office, well away from the city centre, one of the quietest in that part of the country. He shivered.

“You forgot your mask.”

He looked back to the sergeant, who dangled the mask by the strap between finger and thumb. Bremen smirked and went down the corridor without taking it.

“I'll send you the details to your onboard computer.”

Bremen didn't say anything. He felt like s**t, his knees ached, the back of his throat already coated with something metallic and unpleasant. He coughed, fished out a cigarette and lit it.

He found his car in the holding bay and got in behind the console. The red lights blazed and almost at once, the soft, lilting tones of the computer's female voice greeted him, “Good morning Detective Bremen. I have the details of your destination. Manchester barracks, Eastside dock business complex. Estimated time of arrival is seven point three minutes. Traffic is light this time of day, I doubt if you will have to change to—”

Bremen turned down the volume and leaned back in his seat, staring at the ceiling as he blew out a stream of smoke. He'd been on duty for three nights, with one more to go of his shift. All he needed was another quiet night, not a case of arson that would probably lead nowhere. Questions to ask, reports to fill in. He blew out his cheeks and stubbed the cigarette into the dashboard, “Let's just get on with it, shall we?”

Cutting through the night, he peered down every now and then, to watch the occasional civil disturbance, the gunfights, the assaults. He saw rapid response bikes swooping down over gangs of citizens breaking open whatever shops or warehouses remained in operation. Across the tarmac, several bodies lay surrounded by black pools. Blood flowed, as it always did.

Lights blazed from the tenements. He did not dare lower the windows, for fear of contamination, but he thought he could hear the constant drone of screams, an unending symphony of despair. To his right, the grey streak of the river, the lights of the far bank flittering over the surface. Over there, the violence and depravation were the norm. The bad side of town, where night time was a trip down abattoir lane. Bremen closed his eyes and wished it all away.

The engines wheezed into reverse and he brought himself awake, shaking his shoulders, putting fists into his eyes. The descent proceeded slowly and he leaned forward and turned the console volume up. “We have arrived, Detective. Did you enjoy the ride?”

Bremen grunted and clambered out before the door had fully opened and cracked his head on the rim. He cursed, holding his scalp, and fished out his cigarettes. The pack was empty and he threw it away in disgust and trudged through the grime and the stink towards the vast, red-bricked building looming up before him.

He stopped and peered skywards. A hundred black windows gazed down at him, not a light anywhere. Fire? Where the hell was the fire?

Close by, arc lamps lit up everything with an insipid light. Bremen shivered.

A cold breeze came up from the river and he pulled his coat tight around his throat and walked up to the doors, which were at the top of a broad set of steps. Waiting there were two men, uniformed, with black berets set at a jaunty angle. There was nothing jaunty, however, about the huge, menacing looking automatic rifles they held close to their chests.

The first guard did not look at him as Bremen drew closer, waving his identity card in front of the man's nose. “Bremen. Local investigation squad. Where's the fire?”

Taking his time, probably deliberately, the guard turned and looked down at Bremen. There was no emotion in his face, nor in his voice when he rasped, “You're not allowed inside.”

Bremen blinked, “Eh? What did you say?”

“You're not allowed inside.”

“I haven't said I wanted to go inside.”

“But you will. And you can't.”

Bremen stepped back, allowing his jacket to fall open as he put his fists on his hips. “Says who?”

“Says me. The building is in quarantine.”

“Quarantine? Against what?”

“Against any possible threat.”

Bremen coughed and for the first time noticed neither guard wore a mask. “Jesus Christ, you're bloody androids.”

“We are government agents, Detective Bremen. This area is off limits to law-enforcement personnel.”

“Why?”

“I've already told you.”

“I don't believe you. I was sent here to investigate a fire. It was reported.”

“There is no fire. It was a false-alarm. Good night, Detective.”

Bremen leaned forward and looked deep into the lifeless eyes, “So how come you're here?”

“Good night, Detective,” said the second guard, as unemotional as the first, but by swinging the automatic rifle in his direction, Bremen got the point.

He clumped down the steps and looked left and right before seeing the emergency response vehicle and the three men sitting around chatting. They all wore heavy-duty masks so they weren't androids. Bremen felt sure he would at least gain some information from them. As he drew closer, the men stopped talking and became tense, measuring him with their narrowed eyes.

“Which of you is in charge?”

“I am,” said a squat, balding man, considerably older than the others. Even in the dark and the mask Bremen could see how sallow faced the man was. Bremen flashed his identity card. The man shrugged. “Thought you might be some sort of investigator.”

“That's precisely what I am. I need to ask you some questions.” The man sighed, the sound amplified from behind the mask. “I was told there was a fire. It came through to the station, so somebody must have thought there was one, but from what I can see it was all a hoax.”

“It was a bomb.”

For a moment, Bremen didn't register the meaning of the man's words. He stopped, holding his breath, and frowned, “A bomb? You mean, terrorists?”

“Do I? I wouldn't know.”

“But, it exploded?”

“One of them did. We were called after it had gone off and taken out the entire floor. We found and diffused the other two. If they had gone off, the whole bloody place would have come down.”

“I've got to go and take a look. Is it safe?”

“Pretty much, but those two lovely boys won't let you inside, no matter who you are. You've had a wasted journey, Detective.”

“Seems so.” Bremen looked back towards the two men at the top of the steps who stood as still and straight as statues. “Government agents? What the hell is the government doing here?”

“Search me, maybe it was terrorists, who knows. I didn't ask and if you've got any sense, you won't try and find the answer to that particular question, old son. Best keep your nose out of it.”

Bremen frowned again. “But why a bomb? What was in there?”

“Haven't a clue, and those two weren't about to let us sniff around. As soon as we did our job, they frog-marched us out.”

“Didn't you ask why?”

The chief gave Bremen a look of utter contempt, “Are you a rookie, or just plain stupid? Nobody asks government agents anything. We just did as we were told.”

“But the first bomb, the one that went off? Where was it?”

“Third floor office. It blew out every window in the place, and everything that was inside. All we faced by the time we managed to smash our way through the rubble was a ruin of furniture, ceiling debris, holes in the walls.”

“Nobody killed?”

“Nobody was in there, not this time of the morning. Look,” he glanced around, ensuring he was well out of ear-shot, and pulled Bremen away by the elbow, “you'd do well not to ask any more questions, yeah? I'll tell you this much; this is weird. They were here before us, those two goons, seemed to know everything, so that means maybe they were given a tip-off or …” His eyes held Bremen's.

“Or what?”

“They planted the bomb.”

Some ten minutes from the station, Bremen set down next to an all-night food kiosk. The man behind the counter almost filled the entire space. He had a repeating shotgun in his hands, and wore a look that proclaimed to the world that no one had better mess with him. Bremen avoided eye contact and scanned down the menu hanging on the side of the kiosk. “What's in your burgers?”

“Nuts.”

“Eh?” Bremen looked up, frowning. “Just nuts?”

“A bit of rat meat. This ain't no five-star restaurant, bub. So, make your choice and then f**k off.”

To give meaning to his words, he hefted the big shotgun in his paws. Bremen shook his head, slid his payment card across the checkout monitor, and said, “I'll try one.”

A sudden scream from behind made them both jump. Bremen turned to see a woman, dressed in a shredded black dress, bare-legged and bare-footed, bursting out of a tenement block, taking the entrance steps three at a time. A couple of seconds behind her came a large guy, totally naked, wielding a broken bottle. Blood spewed from his mouth from some sort of blow.

“Come here, you bitch.”

Bremen watched it as if it were a film, leaning back against the kiosk, thinking whether he should intervene or not. But the business at the barracks continued to play out in his head. This was the B-movie, of little interest, despite the fact he thought he recognised the naked man. Forcing himself to concentrate on the man's face, not the rest of him, he yawned at the normality of it all. Even when a black hover-car settled down in the middle of the street and three guys in uniforms bailed out, two of them with black, evil looking automatics, which barked loudly and riddled the big naked guy with half a dozen bullets. The man's chest and abdomen exploded and he fell back against the steps, dead. The woman, sobbing, with face in hands, staggered over to the car. One of the uniformed men helped her inside and within seconds, the vehicle lifted up into the still dark sky and was gone.

“Pimps and whores,” mumbled the kiosk owner and slid the burger across to Bremen.

“Nice neighbourhood”

“Better than most.”

Bremen swung around and took a bite of the burger. He munched through the stringy filling and shrugged. “Could do with more onion.”

“That's ersatz, bub. Ain't no such thing as onions round here.”

“Ersatz? What's that, German?”

The man pushed the shotgun aside and took a wet cloth to wipe down the counter. “I'm German. So are those burgers. You don't like it, you can f**k off, like I said.”

“No, no,” Bremen peered at the burger with appreciation, licking his lips, “it's fine. Will someone come and take the body?”

“Dogs will do that.”

Bremen nodded. This truly was a great neighbourhood. “Tell me, you know anything about the Manchester barracks?”

The man stopped cleaning and gave Bremen a dark look. “Only that it used to be a barracks and it's not in Manchester.”

“Yeah, but have you heard of anything going on there?”

“Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you.”

Bremen shrugged. “What if I scanned in a couple of hundred?”

“I'd tell you to f**k off.”

“Five hundred?”

The man's mouth curled upwards slightly. Probably as close to a smile as he could manage. “Scan it in, bub.”

Bremen did so and popped the last piece of burger into his mouth.

“All I know is there are a lot of people working in there. But not low-lifes. Professional people. They get took in there every morning by a bus, which picks them up again late at night. They pass right by here every day.”

“What is it they do?”

“I have no idea. Must be important though, as there are armoured cars and other heavy duty s**t all around that place. Anyone gets anywhere close, they are told to leave. If they don't,” the guy put his forefinger against his head and used his thumb to fire the make-believe gun. “Bang!”

Bremen blinked. “What, you mean they shoot people?”

“I've seen it happen. So, as you can imagine, no one goes anywhere near that place now.”

“The guards, they actually shoot people?”

The man c****d his head, “You deaf, or something? I said, bang! Anyway,” he took up cleaning the counter again, “that's all I know.”

“How many workers in the bus?”

A shrug, a moment's thought. “Thirty or forty, maybe more. They sometimes come in two loads, usually at night. So, maybe eighty. And they work in shifts. The place is never quiet.”

“It is now.”

“You been?” He shook his head, running the cloth over the counter top again for something to do. “You must have a death-wish.”

Bremen wiped his fingers of a napkin and looked back across the road to the dead man lying there in his blood and guts. “You must love it here.”

“You said it, bub. A paradise on Earth.”

As he stumbled into his apartment, eyes gritty, the stench of the street thick in his nostrils, the news came through on the holo-vision. There had been yet another terrorist outrage. An important government official gunned down outside a friend's house, and a nearby refreshment kiosk blown up. The owner, one 'Leonard Karpernov' left dead at the scene. Security services did not believe the two incidents were connected.

Bremen slumped into his chair and gaped at the scenes in front of him, unable to move, even when the vomit rose up from his guts. He retched, doubling up, and sat for a long time, staring down at the mess, not knowing if he should ever set foot outside his apartment again.