Halfhead by Stuart B. MacBride Read Free Book Online Page A

one of the minor access escalators: a small plexiglass bunker squatting on the building’s roof. The transparent panes were all scratched, covered with fading graffiti tags, the plexiglass swollen and blackened in one corner, where someone had tried to burn the place down. The moving steps were gone, exposing a ramped tunnel that disappeared into the depths of the building.
    Will looked down into the hole. ‘This the only option we have, Sergeant?’
    Nairn nodded. ‘Aye, sir. If we want to steer clear of the main access points it’s this or we go down the outside on wires.’
    Will tried not to shudder—there was no way he was going out over the edge of Sherman House on the end of a body-wire ever again.
    Nairn gave the orders, sending Privates Dickson and Wright scurrying down the ramp into the darkness. He gave it a count of ten, then waved at the SOC team. ‘Beaton, Stein: you’re next. And keep the noise down this time! I don’t want every psychotic wee lowlife in the place using your bloody scanning equipment as a homing beacon.’
    ‘What do you mean “our scanning equipment”?’ Stein slapped the battered canister. ‘Just cos we’ve been lumbered with this shite four times in a row don’t mean we’re makin’ a career out of it!’
    ‘Shut your cakehole! You will hump that bloody scanning stuff about and you will like it. Or I will connect your rectum to your bloody ears with my boot!’ There was no smart reply from Private Stein, he just picked up his end of the SOC canister and clambered into the tunnel. Nairn nodded. ‘Better. Rhodes, Floyd: you’re on rearguard.’
    Will picked his way carefully down the slippery ramp. Six feet in, the track twisted back on itself, doglegging around a support pillar, and as he turned the corner Will’s innards clenched. The toilets downstairs had been bad enough. But this was…This was…Jesus.
    The breathing exercises weren’t working any more.
    Stupid. It was just a building. Nothing to worry about.
    So how come his legs wouldn’t move?
    Inside, Sherman House hadn’t changed much in the last eleven years: dingy corridors, lined with silent, shuttered apartments. All the horrors locked away and secret. At least this time the carpets wouldn’t be sticky with blood.
    Grubby plastic spheres lined the passageway, giving off a pale, insipid glow that did more to exaggerate the shadows than illuminate things. More graffiti lurked in the gloom, covering the beige walls like cheap tattoos. People trying to leave their mark on a world that had already forgotten about them.
    Someone tapped him on the shoulder and Will flinched. ‘No offence, sir,’ said Sergeant Nairn, ‘but think we could get a move on? I’d kinda like to get out of here before the natives go apeshit.’
    ‘Right. Sorry…’ Will cleared his throat. ‘Good point.’
    He forced his feet to move again, following DS Jo Cameron down the broken escalator into the depths of the building.
    ‘You know,’ she said as they passed the fifty-first floor, ‘you seem a bit tense.’
    ‘Really.’ Will frowned in the darkness. It stank of mildew in here, stale air, and something sickly sweet and floral—not quite covering up the sour background smell of damp carpet.
    ‘Yeah, ever since George showed you those brain scans you look like you’re holding a hand grenade between the cheeks of your bum. I’ve visited Sherman House dozens of times, it’s not as bad as you think any more. Honestly.’
    Will turned the next corner—looking out at another identical corridor. ‘Think we could just focus on the job in hand?’
    ‘If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
    She shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
    It seemed to take forever to work their way down to the forty-seventh floor.
    Will hadn’t seen a single living soul since they’d arrived on the roof; nearly sixty thousand people lived in Sherman House and there was no sign of any of them. Like the