"The time is always right to do the right thing."
--Martin Luther King jr.
It always turned out like this; standing on the crest of a dune, looking out at a vast, flat plain of burning sand, with a column of men advancing slowly towards him, all in single file, all of them with the barrels of their guns pointing to the ground.
And their faces, close up: dejected, beaten, eyes filled with fear and despair. Broken men, from a broken Iraqi regiment.
"Oi, Peck! Give us a hand with this!" someone yelled. He turned, saw Smudge and Deano lifting a crate of weapons onto the back of an Army truck more than a hundred yards distant. He took one leaden step forwards, his boots sinking into the soft sand ...
A glint of light on the horizon. He looked at the truck, his mates, the driver ...
And he froze.
"C'mon, Peck!" Smudge said. "What're yer waiting for -"
Smudge's last words.
Libra awoke, drenched with sweat, shivering, cold. The blankets were on the floor of the bedroom. He'd gone and kicked them off again.
Libra checked his watch. 6:30. Only six hours' sleep this morning. With a groan, he got up out of bed and staggered over to the sink. He stared at himself in the mirror.
"Christ, I look like shit," he said. Then he picked up the razor and shaving oil he'd bought down at the local Superdrug the day before.
The phone rang before Libra could start. He stumbled across his shoes on the way to the phone, picked up the handset.
"Zeiss19," said a voice on the end of the line.
"Libra," came the automatic response.
"Justice is patient," said Zeiss19.
"Observe," Libra replied, blearily.
"Can I ask you something?" Zeiss said.
"Go ahead," Libra replied.
"How long are you going to be in Manchester?"
"I'm paid up in this B&B until a week Friday," Libra said. "If I can get my job done quickly, I might be able to come back sooner. Now, what the hell are you doing up at 6:30 this morning?"
"I pulled an all-nighter."
"When's your exam?"
"Next Monday," Zeiss said. "This wasn't an exam thing."
"Okay," Libra said. "Spill."
"Hold on," Zeiss said, pausing. There was a change to the quality of the line. The background crackle faded away, replaced by an almost echoing silence, like listening to a conversation through the cardboard tube you get in the middle of kitchen tissue rolls.
"Locked and hidden," Zeiss said, the voice curiously tinny.
"I'll never know how you do that," Libra said. "Continue."
"Okay, well the latest theory from the Unity site is that the Heralds guide people to their imbuing. They can sense when someone is good hunter material, and then they steer them through bizarre coincidences to the site where they meet the monster, see their first Message.
"Every single 'origins tale' has featured some sort of monster. There haven't been any chosen who became imbued in the presence, say, of only other hunters, or bystanders, or spontaneously without there being any sort of weirdness nearby at all."
"And?"
"Don't you see?" Zeiss said. "The monsters we face the first time are only important in one respect. They're catalysts."
"Catalysts?"
"The Heralds guide us to the site, and start bellowing at us to wake up. But it's the presence of the monster that initiates the change within us, turns us into the chosen," Zeiss said. "We only catch the Heralds' message once we wake up, because we become receptive to them at the same time."
"Meaning that they won't, or can't, activate our abilities directly," Libra said. "They put in the mechanisms that make us what we are, but they can only steer us to a place and time where what's in us can come alive of its own accord."
"Our gifts," Zeiss said, "like The Word and the sight, could be given us by the Heralds; or maybe they're in us by blood and stimulated into activity by the Heralds, like that wacko said in his book. Another possibility is that our blood may only determine our ability to handle our gifts, and not the gifts themselves.
"Maybe the only thing we carry in our blood is our conviction that we've got to do something when we're faced by the monsters; the edges then kick in, once we become aware that we have them. But whatever the origin of our abilities, it takes the shock of exposure to jar the mechanisms to life. Like a kick start."
"Otherwise," Libra said, "they'd have just activated us all at the same time, all on the same day, with or without a monster present."
"Exactly." Libra paused. "What does this mean, in terms of the hunt?"
"The imbuing may only be a start, and all this day-to-day hunting, one monster at a time, could be a side issue. The daily monsters we face aren't the real threat. We're supposed to be aimed at the big ones, maybe later in the game, if you know what I mean."
"Which translates as ..." Libra said.
"We're not God's Hammers or God's Swords," Zeiss said. "We're God's bullets."
"Interesting theory," Libra said. "Now, anything of a more operational nature?"
"Nothing noted here," Zeiss replied. "I've been looking at the factors behind Oldham - hey, did you know something similar has started in Keighley in Yorkshire? A group of youths beat up an old white guy over there."
"No shit," Libra said. "The factors?"
"Oh, yeah. Well, there don't appear to be any direct supernatural influences," Zeiss said, "but from conversations with the parish priests and the Muslim priests in the mosques in Oldham, possessions and sightings have been going up in the area since about a week after the whole race issue began, a few months back."
"How did you convince them to speak openly?" Libra asked.
"I took a leaf out of Arjuna's book," Zeiss said. "I asked them all to discuss a theological point about demons and evil for my "term paper." Did they believe evil existed?"
"Anything else?"
"Yeah," Zeiss said. "Since Blaster's cell bought it, there hasn't been a single imbuing in the city - at least, nobody's turned up on the Net so far."
"Doesn't that strike you as odd in some way?" Libra said. "There are tens of thousands of people in Greater Manchester alone. Even Peterleigh has managed to rustle up nine or ten imbued and a bunch of bystanders over the last 22, 23 months, not counting us."
"I know," Zeiss said. "It bugs me."
"I understand," Libra said. "I'm going to take a stroll into town today. It's the funeral of Chandra's mum, so I'm just going to wander, let Chandra grieve for a bit, and do my own legwork. I have to go and look for some sign of where Blaster's holed up. Maybe I can track down the wackos who did for his people as well."
"Yeah. Hey, watch out for Spartan, if you see him," Zeiss said. "I got an email last night. He's in town, looking for you. And he's with this bystander cop Croft."
"They're on the hunt for the wackos as well, then," Libra said. "Good. I'll make arrangements to meet them in town later." He paused, his finger on the disconnect button, as a thought came to him. "And meanwhile, you get some shuteye early tonight. You've got to revise over the weekend, remember?" There was a sigh of resignation over the line. "All right," Zeiss said, and the line went dead.
"All right, O'Brien, let's go through your statement once again, from the top," DS Croft said, leaning over the man in the interrogation chair. "Where did you get the gun?"
The suspect they were interrogating was wearing heavy Doc Martens, jeans turned up at the ankles and a white T shirt with the Union flag printed on it. Stockily built, the round man's bald, round little head sat firmly on a thick neck, making it look as if his chin was bolted firmly onto his shoulders with nothing connecting them.
His chin was stubbly, with grey spiky looking stubble to match his skinhead cut, and a mouth with far too few teeth opened in a snarl of defiance in a face reddened with anger.
"I fookin told yer," O'Brien said, thumping the end of his index finger on the table, "it - fell - offa - back - of - a - lorry!"
"That's not good enough, O'Brien," said DS Croft. "You were caught trying to rob the Cheltenham & Gloucester branch in Sale yesterday afternoon. The gun you were carrying came from a consignment of weapons which was stolen. The evidence on CCTV is clear; you're already going down for the robbery for a long time. But we're not after anything else. All we want is to find out where the gun came from." Simon straightened up, looming still over the short skinhead. "That's all. Just the gun."
"Well, what's in it for me?" O'Brien asked, belligerently.
DS Croft turned, looked at his colleague, who had been leaning nonchalantly against the far wall, chewing on a pencil, observing the whole interrogation.
"What'd you think?" DS Croft asked. His partner shrugged.
"Give him a cell on the North side if he cooperates," he said. "That always seems to do the trick."
"Okay," DS Croft replied. He leaned over O'Brien again.
"All right, what my colleague here is trying to say is, if you cooperate, we'll have a word with the chief warden of the nick you're going to be sent to. And he'll make sure you get a cell on the north side, if he can."
"What the fook's that got to do with anything?" asked O'Brien.
"It's about how hot things get," DS Croft's colleague said, finally making his input. "You ever been in one of those south - facing jail cells, O'Brien?"
"No," O'Brien replied.
"Well, you see, on those rare days when the sun's shining, it all comes down from the south," his colleague said. "Shines directly into the cell, all day long, from the early morning right through to the late afternoon. You ever seen a dog die from heatstroke in the back of a car left in a car park out under the sun? With no windows open? All ... day ... long?"
O'Brien ran his fingers under the collar of his T shirt, gulped. His red face became even redder, if such a thing was possible.
"And if I get a North facing cell, it won't be so hot?" he asked.
"Yep," said his friend, leaning back against the wall, his work done.
O'Brien looked frantically at DS Croft, at his friend, and then at his hands. A moment later, he began to talk to the recording device.
Two minutes later, they had an address.
There was a ghost, riding a girl, riding the train.
Specifically, she was riding the Metrolink which ran through the centre of town. She'd been sitting in the same place, hour after hour, left front corner of the leading cab of the automated tram.
By her appearance, it looked as if she'd been riding this train for days, her every movement controlled by the possessing spirit.
Each time someone'd approached her, the ghost had waved its insubstantial hand inside her tiny arm, and commanded the stranger to go away and leave them both alone. Either it was because it somehow caused people to forget she was there at all; or because it could somehow remove the desire of people approaching her to help her in any way.
God knew why she'd been chosen by the ghost, or what sustenance it was deriving from her despair aas she was forced, like a puppet, to ride the same circuit over and over.
This day, though, was different. The gentleman sitting behind her on the Metrolink, three seats back, wearing a grubby Mac over a grey suit, looked like any of the businessmen doing the morning commute to work. But a few items marked the man as different.
Firstly, the metal pin on the lapel of his Mac, inlaid with enamel, displaying the hunter sign for Justice. Secondly, the intent in his eyes as he stared at the nimbus surrounding the hapless host. And finally, his season ticket to ride the Metrolink all day, valid until the end of the week.
For one hour, he'd followed the ghostly hitchhiker and his ride as they'd taken the Metro from the Piccadilly Station terminus, through Piccadilly Gardens, first to Altrincham, then back again to the Gardens, and then the next train to Bury. And now they were back on their way into the centre of town, and the man was ready. He'd gathered enough evidence. Time to act.
"Incredible," DS Croft said, as they sat in the Major Street car park, enjoying a takeaway coffee. "He believed every single word. 'Have you ever seen a dog suffocate in the back of a car' and all that bollocks. Amazing."
"And he never figured out that prisons aren't really noted for being very hot places, and in fact North facing cells can get bitterly cold, especially in winter," DS Michael Huntington said, with a smile. "It's a gift." DS Croft chuckled. "Maybe you could quit the force and make a fortune in the Republic of Ireland selling gullible tourists pieces of The Blarney Plank the Stone once sat on."
They both laughed at that. The intercom cut them off.
"All units, be on the lookout for a suspect tailing a young girl on the Metrolink," Control said. DS Croft picked up the mike.
"Control, say that again?" he asked.
"Confirm one suspect," replied Control. "A man, IC-1, in a grubby coat, apparently stalking a stray little girl on the Metrolink. About six foot two, athletic build, no facial description given, but wearing a distinctive hat. You can't miss him."
"All right," said DS Croft. "We'll look into it."
"Shall I send in a uniform unit as backup?" Control asked.
"Negative," replied DS Croft's colleague, snatching the handset from DS Croft. "Show us dealing. Out."
They looked at one another, then at the car park. "How long till the Metrolink gets in to the stand?" DS Croft asked.
"No idea," said Spartan, his colleague. "But we'd better catch him when it gets to the Gardens. What do you think?"
"Yeah, that makes sense," DS Croft said. "Walk or drive in?"
"We've got no choice," said Spartan, gunning the engine. "We drive."
"Through the shopping centre of town?"
"We've got our very own store card," Spartan said, flicking on the Blues and Twos. "Don't leave home without it," he added, with a smile.
The Metrolink pulled into Piccadilly Gardens at long last. Libra got up, began to follow the crowd as they moved for the exit. The ghostly rider, of course, stayed where it was.
Just as Libra expected.
The platform doors remained open; the platform was completely empty. For a moment, Libra wondered what was going on.
Then he saw the suited men coming towards him. With the sight on, he saw nothing wrong with them: but he didn't need his experience to know what they were ... or who they were coming for.
"Excuse me, sir ..." said the lead policeman. "I'm Detective Sergeant Simon Croft, and this is my associate -" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate his associate. Silence. Simon Croft turned to look at his colleague.
"You can see it, too," Libra said, to Spartan.
Simon looked at the only passenger on the train. He groaned.
"Can you see it, as well?" Libra asked.
"No," Simon replied, "but back when I was in Peterleigh, there was something similar -"
"Wait a second," Libra said, his face brightening. "Did you say Peterleigh?"
"Yes, but I got transferred to North -"
"Was your colleague at the time called Helen Brennan?" Libra asked.
DS Croft froze, turned to face the suspect. "Why yes, as a matter of fact. But how did you know that?" By now, his colleague had also turned to face the suspect. "Unless ... you're ..."
"The name's Libra," said Libra, extending his hand. "You're the policeman who helped solve those deaths. The archaeological dig."
"Oh yeah," said Spartan. "I heard about it on the news. That was your catch, Simon? Good one." He looked at Libra. "You know me as Spartan."
They shook hands warmly.
Spartan indicated the girl in the front seat of the Metrolink. "Now, this stalking little girls. Is that yer hobby, or have you always secretly wanted a family of your own?"
"I'm blushing here," Libra said, feeling the heat coming from his face. "I haven't blushed since that brothel in Hamburg."
"Now that's too much information there," said Spartan. "What's with her in there anyway?"
"The ghost wants to ride the train," Libra said. "That's all. But it doesn't give a shit if it rides her into the ground, poor mite."
"And what can you do about it?" Spartan asked.
"Easy," Libra replied. "Detective Croft, I'd like to ask you a big favour."
"What's that?"
"Get in the tram," Libra said, "and get ready."
"Ready for what?"
"You'll know."
"What about me?" asked Spartan, nodding to DS Croft, who boarded the Metrolink.
"Give the tram the all - clear," Libra said. "Suspect harmless; just a concerned citizen wondering about this runaway he's seen. And she is a runaway, too, probably with a good home to go to, poor mite."
"Eh? Oh, oh of course, yeah," Spartan said, suddenly realising. He fished out his mobile, speed dialled. "Hello, yes," he suddenly said. "Go ahead. Give the Metrolink the all clear. The guy wasn't stalking her. No, he was going to call us on his mobile as soon as he got the reception. Yeah, the kid's a runaway. Yeah, very badly confused, probably frightened. Have a couple of people waiting by the terminus, okay? Yeah, tell Metrolink they can send it along again. Okay, thanks."
Hanging up and folding the phone, he put it in his pocket, then turned to look at Libra. "Well, whatever it is you can do," he said, "you'd better do it now."
"All I need," Libra said, "is to be able to see it." As the train doors closed, Libra stepped towards the windows, peered inside. The girl was there, and so was the nimbus surrounding her.
"All right, then," he said, as the train began to pull away. "Freeze, you little shit." He gave it the Eye.
On board the vacant Metrolink, Simon Croft watched as the girl seemed to suddenly twitch and convulse as the tram began to pull away. Suddenly, it was as if all the girl's strings had been cut; she slumped forwards and slid bonelessly to the floor of the tram.
Simon Croft took a step forward, and nearly choked as what felt like a nauseous cloud of something touched his face. Exhaling loudly, he buckled over; and then the noxious feeling was gone, and the air was clear. Simon felt its lingering traces, as if something had been desperately trying to grab a handhold on his body and soul, and failed as if it was being held in place by a chain tied to a post or something ...
Further speculation was curtailed by the sobbing coming from the front seat. The runaway was back in control of her body again. But the hitchhiker hadn't bothered to erase any of her memories ...
Spartan and Libra watched as the entity swirled and spun, held in place in midair by Libra's gaze.
"How long can you hold it there?" Spartan asked.
"No idea," Libra said. "Usually by now some of my teammates would be getting some in here with those glowing clubs, or maybe Vagabond'd be hitting it with that dissolving heat haze of his. But here, it'll remain imprisoned for as long as I can keep looking at it."
"And how long's that?"
"I trained for a stint as a guard at Buck House," Libra said.
"Fuck me," Spartan said. "That long? Only, you see, there are going to be crowds here, and they'll be wondering what you're doing staring at thin air ..."
"I know," Libra said. "Now tell me what else I can do here? I can't move it. All I can do is keep it here, and maybe it'll lose his host until the tram gets to the Piccadilly terminus -"
The entity began to twitch and convulse. It looked, to the sight, as if parts of it were starting to fly off it; as though something invisible was pelting it, flensing great chunks off its incorporeal hide. They both heard its inhuman scream and shuddered.
"Just hold The Eye on it a moment more ..." Spartan said to Libra. "You've got something here. Just keep it going ..."
Suddenly, the cloud that was the entity seemed to burst, as if pierced by a cloud of particularly sharp invisible shards of whatever was pelting it. With an echoing scream that only the two hunters could hear, the cloud dispersed. Libra exhaled, leaned over. Spartan took a step forward to try to help; but Libra extended his hand out, refusing help.
Twenty minutes later; a coffee house at the end of Tib Street, surrounded by tie-dyed student dropouts and assorted weird people, their hair dyed purple and blue. Chains and piercings predominated, and there was a strange herbal scent in the air ...
"... and that's how we both came to be here," Spartan said. "We've both been called in as consultants." He laughed; a dry laugh, to cover the shock. "I did not expect to have to handle things like that ghost thing back there."
"That 'ghost thing,'" Libra said, nursing the thick black coffee they'd served in a white china cup the size of a bucket, "was absolutely terrifying."
"You're telling me," Spartan said, over his huge cup of steaming tea. "What the bloody Hell was it?"
"A hitchhiker," Libra replied. "We've had some experience of them."
"And what was all that stuff when it turned into confetti and blew away?" asked Spartan.
"I have no idea," Libra said. "Maybe I'll tell Zeiss when I get back. See if anyone else on the net's heard of this phenomenon." He laughed. "If they're still listening."
"I hear you've been killfiled by half the net already," Spartan said. "How long've you been online? A month? Two?"
"Two months," Libra said.
"Doesn't take much these days to be the bad boy, does it?" Spartan replied. "In my Hendon days, you really had to work hard at pissing people off before they started sending you to Coventry." He shuddered. "God, I can't stop shaking, you know?"
"Tell me about it," Libra said. "Where's Simon?"
"He's gone off to return the kid to her family," he said. "He phoned me before we got here. Said she was going on about her Grandfather, who used to be a conductor on the trams till they took them away. She used to talk to him all the time she was growing up, but then she hit twelve and the Change, and something went wrong.
"She says something about her Grandfather having been eaten by shadows, and then suddenly all she knew was riding the bloody tram," Spartan said. "That was a week ago. A bloody week."
"Will the family believe her?" asked Libra.
"Who knows?" Spartan said. "They're a good family. They'll probably be more concerned about her returning home safe and sound than anything. Simon told me they've already got a family counsellor to help them, though God knows what help he's going to be."
Libra lifted the cup to his lips, took a sip of the dark, extremely bitter coffee, grimaced. "This," he said, "is the last thing we ought to be drinking right now," he said.
"You're right," Spartan replied. "Let's go down the pub, and get something to really steady the nerves."
"Yes," Libra said. "And maybe then, we can discuss why we're all here."
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001