The Great Game

The room was clear. I relaxed fractionally. The back window was smashed through, the back door partially barricaded. It looked like our guy was making a run for it. Except that the corpse was clearly Arthur Hallet. It didn’t make sense.

The yellow glow was intensifying. I looked over at the fridge. The side had been pulled open, and the light was spilling out of that. The fuel cell… Great. Just great.

I didn’t know whether I had seconds or minutes, but I couldn’t just abandon Hallet’s corpse. Either he’d decayed impossibly in half an hour flat, or he’d been copied perfectly, which was just as impossible. I gave the corpse a prod, but it was far too soft and sticky to risk picking up. I sighed, and started yanking the table towards the hallway door, trying not to think about the fridge.

A little less than a minute later, I had the table up to the door. There was no way it was going to fit through upright, of course. If I could get the corpse onto a sheet or something, I could pull it down the hallway safely enough. The living-room curtains. I dashed back to the front room, trying to ignore Carter and Mayes, grabbed a big armful of curtain, and heaved. The rail was as crappy as everything else in the house, and it came down immediately. I put my foot through it, bundled the curtain off, and ran back into the hallway.

A giant hammered me in the chest, and everything went white.

* * *

“Taylor? Taylor!” Someone slapped me in the face, a little too enthusiastically.

“Fuck off,” I mumbled. Good god, what was that hideous stink?

I opened my eyes, and found myself staring up an unlovely nose. I jerked back reflexively, thumping my head into something hard. My body felt heavy and wet, as if I was underwater.

“Wakey wakey, Taylor.” Todd Robbins was from my office. He had a voice like burnt coffee, but he was OK really. Most of the time.  He swivelled his middle finger up at me. “How many fingers?”

“Ha ha.” I tried to move my arm, but it was sluggish, unwilling to respond. I looked down nervously. Hallet was smeared all over me, but particularly across my stomach and arms. His head was lying in my lap, minus the lower jaw. Perfect.

I pulled an arm out of the mess, and shook the gore off. Robbins dodged out of the way, cursing.

“We need to get this bagged,” I said.

“I was planning on having you hosed down,” said Robbins. “I suppose I can find someone to scrape you clean, though. What the hell happened?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Someone opened up on us as we came through the door. I was lucky. Carter and Mayes… Well. Whoever the shooter was, he made a run for it. How long has it been?”

“About twenty minutes since Carter offlined.”

“I guess he’s not coming back right away, then. Someone will need to head out back, see if there’s a trail.”

“They’re already on it.”

“Ok.” I closed my eyes and lay back against the wall. “Will you get me cleaned off now, please?”

Two hours and three thorough hair-washes later, I was in the office. Someone had boxed up Carter’s stuff already, which was a relief. You never get used to losing team members. With Mayes gone, Carrie Ransom was sole lead, and naturally she wanted to go over every detail three times. It was past 8pm when I finally got to my desk.

Preliminary analysis confirmed that Hallet had been dead for twelve days. Speech and retina analysis from surveillance confirmed that he’d been fine this morning. The guys on the ground had followed the shooter’s trail for a few hundred metres — until it just vanished into thin air somehow. The footprints matched Hallet’s weight and foot size. What the hell was going on?

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Today’s photo is Heads by Public Insomnia